Siemens winds down chip manufacturing investments

Siemens unloaded its 12.5 percent stake in Epcos on Monday by selling the 8.1 million shares it owns, said Siemens spokesman Wolfram Trost.

Trost estimated the value of the shares at around ?90 million (US$108 million).

Epcos in Munich was spun out of Siemens Matsushita Components, a joint ventured founded more than 15 years ago by Siemens and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. After Epcos went public in 1999, Siemens and Matsushita remained shareholders, each with a 12.5 percent stake in the components manufacturer.

The Epcos divestment follows Siemens' decision last week to sell its 18 percent stake in Infineon, worth around ?1.1 billion. In 1999, Siemens spun off its semiconductor business into Infineon and took the Munich company public in 2000, at the height of the Internet bubble.

Both Epcos and Infineon have struggled to post consistent profits since being spun off into independent companies.

"We said six years ago that we would eventually sell our stakes in Epcos and Infineon," Trost said.

Following these divestments, Siemens now has no significant stakes in any chip manufacturing companies, he said.

The German conglomerate has been exiting high-tech businesses to concentrate on areas that it views as less volatile and more profitable, such as transportation and health care.

Last year, Siemens paid Taiwan's BenQ Corp. to take over its ailing mobile phone business, and earlier this year, it sold the Product Related Services Division of its IT services subsidiary, Siemens Business Services, to Fujitsu Siemens Computers BV.

In 2004, Siemens sold 13 million shares in Juniper Networks Inc., lowering its stake in the company to below 5 percent.