#divestiture

Very connected senior employee halfway around the world told me today Imperial was to be sold. Stopped by here to see total panic so am thinking it must be real.

Occidental Petroleum in talks to sell OxyChem chemical unit for at least $10 billion

Occidental Petroleum has announced that it is in advanced talks to sell its chemical division, OxyChem, for at least $10 billion. The announcement sent Occidental's stock rising over 1% in premarket trading. The potential sale is expected to accelerate the company’s efforts to reduce debt and improve shareholder returns, according to Barclays. An announcement could come in the next few weeks, marking a strategic shift for Occidental as it focuses more on financial strengthening and streamlining operations.

OxyChem is a major global producer of chlor-alkali, PVC and caustic potash, with strong cash flow and links to Occidental’s Direct Air Capture initiatives. Despite its operational value—evident in Barclays’ projected EBITDA growth from $1.24 billion in 2025 to $1.46 billion in 2027—Occidental appears willing to divest the unit to boost balance sheet health. The $10 billion price tag reflects a roughly 7x EBITDA multiple for 2026–2027, higher than the company’s current valuation multiples. Even after taxes, the deal is expected to be slightly accretive, further reinforcing positive investor sentiment.

https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2025/09/occidental-petroleum-in-talks-to-sell-oxychem-chemical-unit-for-at-least-10-billion/?oly_enc_id=7798E9325367A8R

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/occidental-talks-sell-oxychem-unit-least-10-billion-ft-reports-2025-09-28/

Workforce reductions and acquisition exits come as IT demand softens; TCS also cut staff amid industry-wide caution earlier.

"The business optimization program has two parts. One related to rapid talent rotation that Julie mentioned, which reflects severance associated with headcount reductions that we are making in a compressed timeline, and second, related to the divestiture of two acquisitions that are no longer aligned with our strategic priorities," CFO Angie Park added.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/information-technology/layoffs-acquisition-pullbacks-slower-growth-accenture-hints-at-grim-picture-for-fy26-13580710.html

Acquisition Pullbacks:

Messaging: "didn't align with our strategic priorities"

"Accenture also announced plans to exit certain non-core businesses and divest assets worth $865 million as part of its ongoing portfolio optimization strategy. The move is aimed at reallocating resources toward higher-growth areas, particularly AI, digital services, and cloud-driven initiatives, enabling the company to streamline operations while strengthening its focus on emerging technologies."

No longer with APA but hear they sent out an employee survey. Won’t be surprised if minions just lie and APA named a top 2025 workplace. Be honest or don’t fill it out at all, but please don’t lie. Also, why does this cr-ppy company need a CEO and a President? Fire the CEO and save $10m easy. Sitting back on the side and watching this company crash, I feel bad for all the employees that have been there for years. Worthless board, hasn’t done it job and now it’s too late and won’t make a difference. Only hope these fools at the top have is to try and sell the company.

Selling off and laying off in Europe and Americas.

Why did Aramco invest in this? At the end of the day its all the same Saudi bank account but not a good look.

Another poorly named internal Xerox project.
The time is near. One last attempt to maintain relevance and it’ll come at the expense of what’s left of the sales team.
Customers will shift to inside sales (remember the Texas facility that just opened) , or be sold off to resellers. IT will be packaged and sold off.
If you’ve been hanging on, your time is almost up. Get out now.

What’s with the rumours of upcoming announcements on either Sept 29 or Oct 1? The amount of layoffs, sell off, rumours is nuts.

Exxon Mobil on Tuesday is selling more of its assets in the North Dakota Williston Basin to oil and gas producer Chord Energy for $550 million, as the major continues to high-grade its unconventional asset portfolio.

https://www.energyintel.com/00000199-53be-d51a-a79d-5bfe58b30000

Looking to summarize the rumors over multiple threads surrounding potential Sept 30 announcements. Note that some rumors are of course contradictory.

• sale/closure of Fife
• sale/closure of Fawley
• sale/closure of Chem plants on European Continent
• upstream layoffs in Germany
• sale of Imperial Oil
• XOM buyout of remaining IOL shares with removal of redundancies
• sale of Kearl
• merger of Upstream Operations with EMPS
• sale of Quarry Park with employees moved downtown Calgary
• sale of Quarry Park with employees moved to Edmonton
• sale of Quarry Park with Employees moved to Edmonton/Sarnia (US/DS)

Paid 15 billion in 2015. Inflation alone should be worth 25 billion now worth under 7 billion. What happened with alterra? All value getting wrecked

When is quarry park to be sold?

curious to know everyone's thoughts on the future of corporate trust

@OP+1k4876rt2 Bumping this post forward...This post had it all right.

Just how bad is it for SAP? Well our stock price has plummeted 12 % in just the last month and shows no sign of a rebound. It is tracking straight down.

But go have a look at what Oracle is doing just today... Stock is on par to set a record - it is up since opening this morning 35%. All due to some very big scores on AI - and where is SAP while others are winning ?? Your guess is as good as mine. This kind of beat down would not have happened under previous leadership teams.

We are planning of dumping our Maintenance Biz, which was responsible for most of our stable revenue over the last several decades and no indication as to what platform will replace this significant revenue stream.

It's hard to watch.

As was stated in the referenced post, CK and DA had better get their act together real soon, or SAP will be lost for good against our competitors.

What happened with the potential sale of BMC Helix?

Anyone have info on this?

ExxonMobil (XOM) stock is trading lower on Friday after reports indicating the company plans to sell parts of its European chemical business. The industry struggles with U.S. tariffs, high energy costs, and growing competition from China.

The company has been steadily reducing its European footprint, often clashing with Brussels over regulatory policies, which it argues inflate energy costs and scare off investors.

The company already agreed to sell its French chemical operations and controlling stake in Esso SAF to Canadian retailer North Atlantic’s French unit.

The U.S. petrochemical producer has held early talks with advisers about divestments that could bring in up to $1 billion, Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Exxon is weighing sales of its plants in the U.K. and Belgium, including an ethylene facility in Fife, Scotland, and several Belgian production sites.

Benzinga reached out to ExxonMobil’s investor relations for comment on the story and is awaiting a response.

Executives also discussed shutting the plants entirely if buyers do not emerge.

Exxon stressed to the FT that a deal is not particular. However, the report highlights Western chemical makers’ challenges, including overcapacity, weaker demand, and low-cost Chinese exports, which are squeezing margins.

U.S. producers remain shielded by President Donald Trump’s planned 15% tariff on European chemical imports, which adds pressure on European rivals.

Other global players, including LyondellBasell (LYB) , are also scaling back in Europe.

Exxon Mobil stock gained just over 2% year-to-date. It failed to reach revenue consensus estimates in at least two of the last three quarters (or the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025).

In August, Exxon Mobil reported second-quarter 2025 earnings of $7.1 billion, or $1.64 per share, beating analyst estimates of $1.47. Revenue reached $81.51 billion, above the $79.34 billion consensus.

The company delivered its strongest second-quarter upstream production since the Exxon-Mobil merger, pumping 4.6 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, a 13% jump from the first half of 2024. This was fueled by the Pioneer Natural Resources acquisition and record Permian Basin output.

Strategic projects advanced this quarter, including the Singapore Resid Upgrade, the Fawley Hydrofiner in the U.K., and Canada’s Strathcona Renewable Diesel project, all expected to add over $3 billion in earnings power by 2026.

https://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/movers/25/09/47528781/exxonmobil-faces-tough-choices-in-europe-as-competition-from-china-intensifies

There are rumors based on things Shankar said that KKR will be selling part of OMNISSA. Could be an interesting next several months. I for one would welcome any opportunity to get out from under this leadership and KKR, both who have proven they have no idea what they are doing

There was a post on here a couple weeks or so back that speculated that the optics group was going to get sold off. What happened to it? Anyone recall seeing it? Went to show a colleague and it’s gone

Expecting announcements soon on divestiture, Lorenzo keeps showing slides on it but no context to which product lines.
Thoughts?

Selling off all their nursing homes left and right. I wonder if Gemini made them do it!!

Japanese advertising agency Dentsu Group Inc. is considering selling its overseas operations, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

If the company sells all of its overseas assets, it could raise several billion dollars, but the move would mark its withdrawal from international business.
https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2025082800990/

The board has been working with a financial company for a year behind the scenes to prepare any and all parts or the whole for sale. Mark had FY25 to stop the bleed but also, simultaneously, start positioning business units to be lean and attractive to buyers .

Today's call was clear as stated by the board member that they have been working with FIN analysts and will continue to do so.

The fact is that a significant amount of preparation for sale has been in play for many months and we can expect and should be ready for a series if announcements when the new CEO comes on board before the start of Q2 in 6 weeks.

@be+1k2f42xsy makes an excellent point.

The Economist, Aug 21st 2025 | 6 min read

To survive, Intel must break itself apart

• And it should do so before it is too late

Intel once set the pace of technological progress. Gordon Moore, one of its founders, predicted in 1965 that chips would get faster and cheaper with metronomic consistency. Over the decades Intel brought Moore’s Law to life, designing and building the processors that powered servers and, later, personal computers. Today it makes headlines for its turmoil more than its technology. On August 7th President Donald Trump demanded the resignation of Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s boss, citing his links to China, only to praise Mr Tan four days later after meeting him. Reports soon surfaced that the government was pursuing a 10% stake in the company, which would make it Intel’s largest shareholder. On August 18th SoftBank, a Japanese tech conglomerate, announced that it would invest $2bn in the company.

The drama has refocused attention on Intel’s plight. The company has missed nearly every big shift in its industry over the past two decades. It failed to profit from the rise of smartphones, was slow to adopt advanced lithography tools and has largely sat out the bo-m in artificial intelligence (AI). Between 2021 and 2024 revenue dropped by a third, from nearly $80bn to just over $50bn; last year it made a net loss of almost $20bn (see chart 1). Over the past five years its market value has fallen by roughly half, to around $100bn. TSMC, which has stolen Intel’s crown as the world’s leading chip manufacturer, is worth ten times as much.

Yet Intel still matters, as Mr Trump’s interest shows. The most advanced chips, vital for smartphones and AI, are now made almost entirely by TSMC. America’s tech giants depend on it. Such reliance on a single supplier—particularly one based in Taiwan—is risky. Intel is one of the few firms that could rival TSMC. But it will need more than government subsidies to do so. If it is to recover its chipmaking prowess, Intel will need to break itself apart.

Throughout its history Intel has designed and built its own chips. That integration let it use its manufacturing prowess to deliver better products even when its designs lagged behind. From the mid-2010s, however, repeated missteps in its manufacturing saw it fall behind TSMC. Deprived of that advantage, Intel’s processors became uncompetitive with those from AMD, a long-term rival which gave up on manufacturing long ago. In 2021 Intel, too, began outsourcing production of its most advanced chips to TSMC.

The erosion of Intel’s manufacturing leadership has coincided with fiercer competition in the market for designing processors. As recently as 2019 Intel controlled 84% of the global market for PC chips and 94% for servers. By 2024 those figures had fallen to 69% and 62%, respectively (see chart 2). AMD, using the x86 architecture pioneered by Intel, has developed better chips. Cloud giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which were once reliant on Intel, now design their own processors using outlines from Arm, a British company owned by SoftBank. In December Amazon said that half the server capacity it added in the preceding two years used its own silicon.

Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s boss from 2021 to 2024, tried to reverse the slide. He split design and manufacturing into two units, allowing the product arm to shop around for the best manufacturer while opening Intel’s chip factories, called “fabs”, to outsiders. To build a contract-chipmaking business, known as a “foundry”, Mr Gelsinger then set about splurging $90bn on new fabs in four American states. He tapped private equity and bagged nearly $8bn in subsidies under America’s CHIPS Act to fund his vision. But the plan was thrown into disarray by a combination of technical problems at the foundry, which deterred external customers, and falling sales at the design arm.

Pat on his back

Mr Tan, who took over in March after Mr Gelsinger was sacked, seems to have different priorities. He has rightly identified that the company is bloated; at the end of 2024 it employed 109,000 people, nearly as many as Nvidia, the leading designer of AI chips, and TSMC combined. Mr Tan plans to cut Intel’s workforce by a quarter by the end of this year. When it comes to AI, he believes that the firm should focus not on designing chips for training models, an area that Nvidia dominates, but on inference, the task of running them. As for the foundry, last month Mr Tan scrapped projects in Germany and Poland, and pushed construction of Intel’s advanced fabs in Ohio back to the early 2030s. He also hinted that the company might retreat from leading-edge manufacturing if it cannot secure external customers.

All that may help buy Intel time. Yet it lacks the boldness needed to save the company from fading into irrelevance. Evercore, an investment bank, reckons Intel’s design arm might be worth more than $100bn on its own. But it faces a crowded field and its products are no longer distinctive.

Mr Tan could sell the division to another fabless chipmaker such as Broadcom while it still holds value and focus solely on the foundry, which is troubled but holds more long-term promise. Its newest “18A” process incorporates transistors that are ahead of TSMC’s, as well as a novel way of feeding power through the back of the chip to save space and energy. SemiAnalysis, a consultancy, reckons Intel will need to invest a bit over $50bn between 2025 and 2027 to make it competitive in leading-edge manufacturing. A sale of the design division would more than cover that.

Parting with the design business would help in other ways, too. Foundries must serve many customers using the same process. To do so they provide “process design kits”—the blueprints chipmakers use to design their products. TSMC’s kits are broad and easy to use. Intel still tunes its kits for its own products first. One veteran designer who has used both says Intel “lacks the experience” of working with outsiders. Ian Cutress, a semiconductor analyst, notes that Intel sought to buy that expertise with its attempted acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli foundry, but the deal collapsed after Chinese regulators withheld approval.

By making its foundry truly independent, Intel may be better able to persuade other chip designers to work with it. More customers would, in turn, make Intel a more compelling choice. Foundries live or die by yield—the share of chips that function as intended. New processes start buggy and improve only with volume. Foundries typically need yields above 70% to break even; the current rate for Intel’s 18A process is reportedly closer to 10%.

America’s tech giants would certainly welcome another alternative to TSMC. Samsung, the only other contender in leading-edge chipmaking, recently secured a $16.5bn contract from Tesla, a car company, to make AI chips at a new fab in Texas. But the South Korean company has a reputation for being difficult with customers and has faced technical challenges of its own. Indeed, if Intel’s shareholders would rather pocket the proceeds of a sale of the design arm, it is possible that a consortium of would-be foundry customers could be persuaded to invest instead. SoftBank has also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring Intel’s manufacturing business.

Intel faces a difficult choice. A foundry-only business would certainly be a gamble. But the longer it dithers, the lower the chance of success. Intel’s greatness once lay in doing everything. Its contribution in future may come from doing one thing well: making chips.

Because they’re cr—py?

I think a lot of GOA assets will get trimmed based on:

• production profile
• potential for nearfield exploration

Someone like Talos can pick up the losers. So what stays and what goes?

Sanjay Mirchandani, Paul Cornier, Michael Rhodin.
Plan is to trim the workforce, sell off portfolios to lower debt and then sell the whole company.