The Baden-Württemberg battery manufacturer Varta has to worry about its financing again. The company admitted that the restructuring agreed with the creditor banks and majority shareholder Michael Tojner just over a year ago is not enough to “return to a profitable growth path” by the end of 2026 as planned.
Negotiations with the banks must now be reopened. The prerequisite for this is that Varta is certified to have a good chance of survival in a new restructuring report. This should be available by the middle of the year. The banks had promised to stay quiet for that long.
The uncertain future shocked Varta shareholders: the share collapsed by up to a third on Friday to an all-time low of 9.30 euros. “I suspect there may be a need for further funding and at the moment it is unclear where this additional funding will come from,” said Warburg Research analyst Robert-Jan van der Horst.
Tojner’s company had already injected 50 million euros in fresh capital a year ago. At the end of September, Varta was in debt with 560 million euros, the liquid assets were only 40 million. A cyber attack on Varta in February, which paralyzed production for weeks, made the financial situation even worse.
The fundamental problem, however, is that the business with both small lithium-ion button cells for headphones and with energy storage for the electricity produced from photovoltaic roofs is going worse than planned. Varta had hopes particularly in the energy storage segment, but demand has collapsed because competitors from China deliver cheaper and dealers are sitting on large inventories.