Austria's ams OSRAM in talks to sell part of its business, shares jump

By Nathan Vifflin

(Reuters) -Austria's ams OSRAM is planning to sell part of its business in order to reduce its debt, it said on Wednesday after reporting first-quarter core earnings ahead of market expectations.

The Switzerland-listed shares leapt 13% by 0908 GMT, leading gains on the Swiss mid-cap index.

Aldo Kamper, ams' Chief Executive, said on an earnings call the company is looking to sell a "valuable" part of its business, which could meaningfully change the profile of the group.

"We are talking to potential buyers, we are actually talking to them already now, and then will then determine which portion of the business we will actually be selling.", he said.

The company earlier said in its earnings statement the proceeds from the sale could be "well above" 500 million euros ($568.8 million).

Net debt stood at 1.91 billion euros in the first-quarter, rising from 1.85 billion euros last quarter, ams said in the statement.

The group, one of the world's largest maker of LED semiconductors, has struggled with debt after a large client cancelled a 1.3 billion euros microLED project in Kulim, Malaysia, in 2024.

Vontobel analyst Mark Diethelm said the potential disposal raises concerns about the longer term impact of the cancelled microLED project despite ams maintaining its earnings guidance amid tariff uncertainty over the automotive sector.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 9% year on year to 135 million euros in the first three months of the year, after the company "successfully mitigated" primary costs of U.S. tariffs, it said.

Analysts were expecting EBITDA of 128.9 million euros, according to data compiled by LSEG.

"Our global footprint and customer base enables us to deal with the volatilities of the new tariff regime." said Aldo Kamper, ams OSRAM's CEO.

Kamper said during ams' fourth-quarter earnings it did not see a meaningful impact from tariffs on its cost base for now, but would be affected if global automotive, smartphone production fell.

($1 = 0.8791 euros)

(Reporting by Nathan Vifflin in Gdansk; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Varun H K and Louise Heavens and Elaine Hardcastle)