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Toshiba Corp announce new plan to sell Toshiba TEC

10 February 2022

Big changes are afoot at Toshiba - and last week, plans lurched away from print.

In November 2021, Toshiba Corporation announced a plan to split into three parts: electronic devices, infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing divisions. Both the print and medical imaging businesses would be part of the devices business.

Toshiba are huge, one of the biggest Japanese publicly-listed companies. Splitting them up was going to be difficult, legally and politically - and very costly.

The original plan was for the Toshiba brand to remain operating Toshiba Tec Corporation - the electronic devices business (copiers, barcode printers and cash registers). This entity was to inherit Toshiba's 40% stake in memory manufacturer Kioxia (which was spun off from Toshiba in 2019) with a view to selling it for cash. This might have raised up to 8 billion USD, enough to cover and protect Toshiba TEC during a transitional phase.

Meanwhile the semiconductor business, and the public infrastructures manufacturing businesses were to be sold off.

But shareholders didn't like the idea. Several large-stakeholders objected very loudly - and Toshiba's share price fell significantly.

We are not saying this is over, but on February 8 2022 a new strategy was announced. In this new plan, the electronic devices business - including MFPs - will be sold off completely. Rather, the Toshiba brand will rather keep the infrastructure services entity, and still retain links with the semiconductor business.

The timescale is for the split to occur in 2023, but the plan is going before an EGM next month.

These are unsettling times for our friends at Toshiba Tec. Should this plan go through, could the company we know as Toshiba Tec survive on its own? Might their manufacturing facilities, impressive patent portoflio and substantial market share worldwide make them attractive to one of the other leading copier brands? Or are all these assets most valuable to Ninestar?

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