Total sell-off

BayWa sells off Austrian warehouse subsidiary

BayWa is already selling RWA and other foreign shareholdings in 2025. The deals are expected to raise up to four billion euros.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

Raiffeisen Ware Austria (RWA) must prepare for its half-owner BayWa to sell its shares as early as 2025. BayWa CEO Michael Baur is ordering the Munich-based agricultural and building materials group to undergo a radical restructuring. Practically all foreign shareholdings are to be sold by 2027. This also applies to the 50 percent stake in the Austrian sister company RWA. 

BayWa also plans to sell the Dutch grain and soybean trader Cefetra as early as next year, and the search for a new owner is already underway. The New Zealand fruit producer T&G Global (Turners & Growers) will then follow in 2026. Baur wants to take until 2027 to sell the remaining 51% of the wind and solar project subsidiary BayWa r.e. because business is currently slow.

Deals should bring in 4 billion euros
In total, BayWa hopes to generate sales proceeds of around four billion euros, including the debts that weigh on the companies in question. Under pressure from the banks, the debt burden is to be reduced from currently more than five billion euros to one billion euros, as can be seen from the overview of the plans. Only under this condition do the experts believe that BayWa's survival is assured. Of sales of around 23 billion euros in the current year, around eight billion will remain, while the operating result (EBITDA) is expected to improve with savings of more than 400 million euros to around 300 (2024 expected: 200) million euros.

In Germany, 1300 of 8000 jobs are to be cut
At BayWa AG in Germany, 1300 of 8000 jobs are to be cut as a result, almost 400 of them at the bloated headquarters. BayWa announced on Wednesday that it would cut back the Group to its core business of agricultural and building materials trading, energy and agricultural machinery as part of the restructuring process. However, the extent of the plans was not made public.

Baur is thus practically reversing the entire expansion under former CEO Klaus Josef Lutz, who had expanded the Group with acquisitions abroad and the development of the project business with wind and solar parks financed by debt.

Rising interest rates, sluggish resale 
Rising interest rates and the sluggish resale of a growing number of renewable energy projects brought BayWa to the brink of bankruptcy in the summer. Since mid-July, Baur has been working with management consultants Roland Berger on a restructuring plan. His main aim in reducing debt is to lower the interest burden, which has swelled from 85 to 400 million euros within five years. By 2027, it should only be 100 million.

Efforts to obtain deferrals and loan extensions
The BayWa Board of Management is currently negotiating with more than 100 banks and other lenders to defer and extend the loans and short-term bonds (commercial paper). A solution is to be found by the end of the year. BayWa is planning a capital increase for the coming year, which according to financial circles will be worth around 150 million euros and in which the major shareholders from the Bavarian and Austrian cooperative sector are to participate. It would be the first since the IPO in 1988, but the 2025 Annual General Meeting must first create the necessary capital framework, so the move is not realistic before the summer.