The president and CEO of Siemens Energy, Christian Bruch, assured this Wednesday that "right now there is no concrete plan" regarding the possible closure of plants or layoffs at Siemens Gamesa and has stressed that Spain is "one of the most important centers " for the group.
Bruch acknowledged to analysts, during the company's results presentation conference held this morning, that the sale of one of Gamesa's most problematic divisions "would be the quickest solution" to fix the negative impact that this company is causing. Siemens Energy, but it is not the one that, in principle, the German company is evaluating, “we are not going to run away from Gamesa,” he assured. Although he also acknowledged that “the losses it is generating hurt.”
In any case, Siemens Energy hopes to "be able to turn around" the problems that Gamesa has faced since it was acquired since it considers wind power as a strategic sector in which the company wants to continue being. Bruch thus wanted to lower expectations in the face of a major strategic announcement when his company celebrates Capital Market Day next week.
The impact of Siemens Gamesa's problems has led Siemens Energy to present historic losses of 4,588 million euros. But these are problems more of the past than the future, according to the analysis carried out by the German energy company, which is confident of recovering the balance point in the next two years given the level of orders that the company has in its portfolio and the specific adjustments that are made. They will present next week.
A continuity that is only possible thanks to the rescue that the company has managed to articulate through the German Government and the country's large financial arm Deutsche Bank, which these days are being joined by other states such as Spain, as confirmed in the Tuesday night.
Bruch acknowledged that they had to resort to the German State, since the group's order book represents "a challenge" for its banks and it needs an instrument that allows Siemens Energy "to resort to these guarantees if there are problems. Bruch has given He profusely thanks both the government of his country and the aforementioned bank because, as he himself has explained, they have allowed Siemens Energy to obtain a total of guarantee lines of 15,000 million euros.
Specifically, in the agreement for the 'rescue' of the company, the German Government will guarantee 7,500 million euros of a total amount of 12,000 million euros of guarantees, of which 11,000 million euros will be provided to Siemens Energy through a banking consortium. The federal government will receive a market-standard payment from Siemens Energy. The remaining €1 billion will be provided by an additional consortium led by Deutsche Bank.
In addition, Siemens Energy and Siemens AG have agreed on a structure that covers the theoretical risk of non-payment of guarantees, giving access to a first loss amount of up to €1 billion, covered by a pledge of shares and by payment deferrals.
What the manager has not specified is which countries other than Spain will participate in the rescue, although from his speech it can be deduced that they will be those like Denmark where, in addition to Spain and Germany, the company has a higher level of jobs at risk, as well as institutions. of the European Union such as the European Investment Bank (EIB).
For its part, the parent company Siemens AG also participates in the operation indirectly, through the purchase of the 18% stake of the Indian company SIL for 2.1 billion euros and does not rule out further divestments.
The executive of the firm considered that these guarantees "are not going to cost any money" to the taxpayer, since the German Government "charges as if it were an insurer." "If everything goes normally, they will even have income," he added. "We want to contribute to the success of the energy transition also in the wind sector, we do not want in any case to abuse this instrument but it is something necessary for our sector," he noted.
