Hisense Home
Appliances announced on March 1st that it planned to subscribe for 83,6 million
shares of common stock of Sanden, at the total subscription price of almost 167
million EUR, representing approximately 75% of the total voting rights and
becoming the controlling shareholder of Sanden. Founded in 1943, Sanden is
listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has achieved sales revenue of 1.58
billion EUR in the fiscal year of 2019.
Hisense Home Appliances’ announcement reveals that, with
the current development of automobiles towards electrification, intellectualization,
networking and sharing, new energy electric vehicle heat pump air-conditioning
and battery fast charging technology are rapidly gaining in popularity. Sanden
is the world's leading first-class manufacturer and supplier of automotive
air-conditioning compressors and automotive air-conditioning systems with a
high level of global brand awareness and its market share for the global sales
of automotive air-conditioning compressors ranked the second in 2019. New
generation electric compressors, integrated thermal management systems and
automotive air-conditioning products developed by Sanden have been extensively
used in new energy electric vehicles.
Hisense has been strengthening its presence in the
intelligent home appliances industry for many years and has a mature global
supplier system and stronger procurement bargaining power, as well as high
quality talents and manufacturing resources. Hisense will use Sanden as the
core company to expand into the automotive air-conditioning compressor and
automotive air-conditioning industries, to achieve Hisense’s expansion in
different industries and enhance the profitability of Sanden through the
sharing of technologies, supply chains, talents, and manufacturing resources.
Sanden will continue to be listed on the Tokyo Stock
Exchange where it announced that it has since June 2020 conducted a global
survey and finally selected Hisense Home Appliances out of more than 25
potential investors. Sanden will cooperate and complement the industry with the
newly introduced major shareholders to jointly develop new energy vehicle
integrated thermal management, vehicle network connection and AI air
conditioning control technology.
In recent years, Hisense has accelerated its
internationalization process and has long-year experience of successful
cooperation with Japanese companies. In 2003, Hisense and Hitachi established a
joint venture in China, producing the commercial air-conditioning system, have
achieved the biggest market share in Chinese market of commercial inverter
multi air-conditioners. Since Hisense’s acquisition of Sharp’s manufacturing
plant in Mexico in 2015, the plant has tripled the size and capacity since the acquisition.
In 2018, Hisense acquired Toshiba Visual Solutions (TVS), and after 18 months
of post-merger integration, TVS has turned to be profitable in 2019 for the
first time in the last 8 years and keeps growing its profitability. At the same
year, Hisense acquired Gorenje, a well-known European white goods company, and
after 15 months of integration, Gorenje has turned losses into profits. Hisense
has accumulated rich experience in team integration, localized management and
resource coordination after the acquisition, which has attracted great
attention in the industry.