Ducati ends up for sale. The well-known Italian motorcycle brand could change hands very soon. He announced it to the Financial Times Andrea Bonomi, chairman of Investindustrial, the private equity fund that owns Borgo Panigale, also stating that "Ducati is a company in perfect health, but to grow further it needs the support of an industrial partner at a global level". Bonomi intends to sell the two-wheeler manufacturer at a price close to 1 billion euros, three times the initial investment.
Last year Investindustrial had given a mandate to Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs to probe a listing on the Ducati stock exchange in Hong Kong, after the delisting of 2008, but this hypothesis now seems to have definitively faded, leaving room for the probable sale to a competitor or a large automotive group.
The rumors want the groups closest to the purchase to be the Indian motorcycle manufacturer Mahindra or the German giants BMW and Volkswagen, as well as Mercedes, which has denied any interest in a shareholding, but with which Ducati established a fruitful working relationship in 2010.
Even if in the last MotoGP the successes have been slow to arrive, despite the celebrated arrival of Valentino Rossi in the ranks of the Italian team, off the track 2011 was a very profitable year for Ducati, which set its historic record with around 42.000 motorcycles sold worldwide, coming to hold a 10,5% share of the sports motorcycle market, up by a clear two points compared to 2010.
The 2011 turnover will be close to 480 million euros, an increase of almost 20% over the previous year, but the company has debts outstanding equal to about 1,7% of earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization, an unsatisfactory result when compared with that of the majority of companies in the private equity portfolio.
