UPDATE 2-Forvia to sell its interiors business to Apollo Funds for $2.1 billion
Apollo Global Management Inc APO | 0.00 |
Updates with share move in paragraph 1, context in paragraphs 2-4, debt details in paragraphs 5-6, CEO quotes in paragraph 7-8. Adds chart illustrating Forvia's revenue by division in 2025.
April 27 (Reuters) - Forvia FRVIA.PA will sell its car interiors business to Apollo Funds APO.N for 1.82 billion euros ($2.13 billion) to cut its debt pile, the French auto parts supplier said on Monday, sending its shares rising 3.5% in early trading.
The unit, which supplies full instrument panel, door panel and centre console systems for cars, recorded 4.82 billion euros in sales in 2025, nearly 18% of the group total.
Forvia aims to close the sale by the end of this year. It had first announced it planned to sell parts of the unit last November as part of a broader push to reduce debt.
Since the 2022 merger of Faurecia and Hella created the world's seventh-largest automotive supplier by revenue, Forvia has made deleveraging and divestments one of its priorities.
It expects the divestment to help lower its net debt by 1 billion euros and its gross debt by 1.4 billion euros, CEO Martin Fischer said in a call with journalists. The net debt was 6 billion euros at the end of 2025.
The car part supplier also expects to reduce its leverage ratio, so that the net debt will be equal to 1.2 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation by 2028, compared with 1.7 times in 2025.
"As the market circumstances have really deteriorated, if the Middle East crisis, it is good that we could attain that kind of price point and then also the debt effect that we had foreseen and communicated already months ago," Fischer said.
The entire interiors business, including its leadership team, 31,000 employees, 59 manufacturing sites and eight research and development centres will be moved into the new ownership, Fischer added.
Forvia also said the chair of its board of directors, Michel de Rosen, had resigned and would be replaced by Pierre André de Chalendar after the company's annual general meeting on June 4.
($1 = 0.8530 euros)