December 22, 2024

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Doosan Enerbility CEO Park Sang-hyun explains the anticipated synergies behind Doosan Group’s restructuring plan during an Oct. 21 press conference in Seoul. (Doosan Group)

Doosan Group’s business restructuring plan has fallen apart once again, after Korea’s martial law turmoil delivered a heavy blow to the stock market.

Doosan Enerbility on Tuesday announced that it decided not to hold a temporary shareholders meeting on Friday this week after it held a board of directors meeting earlier in the day, indicating that the attempt to split off Doosan Bobcat, a subsidiary of Doosan Enerbility, and merge it with Doosan Robotics had to be scrapped.

“Due to unforeseen changes in the external environment, the stock prices of the companies involved in the spinoff and merger plan have sharply declined in a short period of time and significantly widened the gap between the stock price and the stock buyback price,” said Doosan Enerbility in a regulatory filing.

Doosan Enerbility’s stock closed at 17,180 won ($12) per share at Tuesday’s closing, down about 19 percent from Dec. 3, the day of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration. Although the National Assembly passed the motion to scrap martial law early on Dec. 4, shares of Doosan Enerbility plunged by 10 percent on that day alone, and they have been slipping since.

The maker of nuclear reactors explained that its major shareholders had expressed their voices to veto the spinoff and merger plan or forgo taking part in the initially scheduled shareholders meeting on Friday with the fallen stock value.

The company added that it had decided to let investors know the direction it plans to go ahead, and came to the conclusion of scrapping a temporary shareholders meeting.

“As the current situation is something that happened so suddenly and unexpectedly, our company finds it difficult to tell you our alternatives for the fallout of the spinoff and merger plan at this moment," Park Sang-hyun, CEO of Doosan Enerbility, wrote in an open letter to shareholders.

“We will explore various ways to secure more capital for investment and how to achieve growth acceleration through careful reviews.”

Doosan Group has been pushing for the corporate restructuring plan in the last several months as the conglomerate cited the need and logic to create better synergy between its affiliates to bolster their competitiveness.

As Doosan Enerbility holds a 46 percent stake in Doosan Bobcat, the latest plan was to spin off a new company that will own Doosan Enerbility’s Bobcat shares and integrate under Doosan Robotics as a subsidiary.

Under the plan, a stakeholder that holds 100 shares in Doosan Enerbility would have received 88.5 shares of Doosan Enerbility and 4.33 shares of Doosan Bobcat, which are aimed at returning more to the investors from the previous proposal of 75.3 shares in the former and 3.15 shares in the latter. The initial restructuring plan faced backlash from shareholders and financial authorities, so the heavy machinery-to-energy conglomerate had to revise the earlier plan.

By Kan Hyeong-woo (hwkan@heraldcorp.com)