The president and the boss of the Thun solar company take their hats and the critical major shareholder receives the required seat on the board of directors. Meanwhile, business is worse than ever.
Meyer Burger Managers Disembark
Except for expenses, there was nothing: last year, the management of Meyer Burger fought with all their might against the interference of the largest shareholder - with success.
But on Thursday the U-turn: The machine manufacturer from Thun announced together with its annual figures that the Chairman of the Board of Directors Remo Lütolf and the boss Hans Brändle are stepping down. And: A representative of the unloved major shareholder Sentis Capital is to be elected to the board of directors - the very representative against whose election Meyer Burger fought back and forth last year.
Brändle, who has headed Meyer Burger since 2017, will be replaced by Gunter Erfurt at the end of March. The German physicist has been a senior manager at Meyer Burger since 2015. It is said of Brändle that he is resigning voluntarily.
With Remo Lütolf this is less clear. He has only chaired Meyer Burger since last May and will now resign at the next General Assembly. The former ABB manager Lütolf is also president of the defense and technology group Ruag. At Meyer Burger, he is losing a mandate that is of secondary importance to him - and one that caused him a lot of friction during his short term in office.
Even before Lütolf took office, the Meyer Burger Board of Directors was under attack from the investment company Sentis Capital of the Russian-Austrian billionaire Petr Kondrashev. Kondrashev had invested a lot of money in Meyer Burger's last capital increase and was not satisfied with the way the company was run.
Meyer Burger is returning
After a few letters to the board of directors that did not produce the desired reaction, the representatives of Sentis Capital went public with various allegations. Meyer Burger, for its part, warned against the entry of Sentis representative Mark Kerekes into the board of directors because company owner Kondrashev is on a sanctions list in the USA.
Meyer Burger then surprisingly started peace talks with Sentis Capital. Not only should Kerekes now take a seat on the Meyer Burger Board of Directors. Meyer Burger also withdraws the earlier statements made to Kondrashev in the press release.
Is Remo Lütolf's departure as Meyer Burger President part of the peace treaty? The reasons for the resignation after only one year were also not given at the media conference on Thursday. Lütolf only said that Meyer Burger now needs "calm and trust", and that "fresh personalities are needed". Lütolf's successor as Chairman of the Board of Directors is still open.
Following the disappointing sales figures that have already been published, Meyer Burger has also published the profit figures for 2019: The solar company posted a loss of almost 40 million francs. It was the eighth consecutive year in the red. The already thin capital cushion has thus shrunk again.
Tuna is losing weight
After the wave of layoffs is over, 82 people are still working at the headquarters in Thun. The future Meyer Burger boss Gunter Erfurt will not be one of them. He travels a lot, he said, but is keeping his center of life in East Germany, near Hohenstein-Ernstthal, where Meyer Burger's only remaining factory is.
Meyer Burger's machines produce so-called heterojunction solar modules that produce more electricity than most of the competition's modules. But so far these have not been able to prevail on the market against the cheap Chinese systems.
Meyer Burger is currently examining various options for the future. A sale is not in the foreground. Instead, Meyer Burger wants to no longer just build systems for the production of solar cells, but also produce solar panels itself. This either together with a partner company or alone, with money from a new investor.
It won't be easy - investor confidence has long been lost. The share price fell 26 percent on Thursday in the generally deep red market.