Rheinmetall Sells Power Systems to AEQUITA for €350 Million, Completing Automotive Exit
Düsseldorf, 3 June 2026
Key points
- Rheinmetall signed the sale of 100% of its Power Systems division — the Pierburg, Kolbenschmidt and Motorservice automotive business, around €2 billion in 2025 revenue and some 6,250 employees, all to be retained — to Munich investment house AEQUITA for a provisional €350 million, closing expected in Q4 2026 pending regulatory approval
- The sale is the final step out of the automotive supply business after the 2023/24 piston-unit divestments, and triggers a further impairment of roughly €200 million on a worsening automotive market
- Retained in-house: the KS Huayu AluTech casting joint venture (held as a discontinued operation), the Dermalog SensorTec biometric-sensor stake — moved into the Weapon and Ammunition division at Neuss — and Pierburg's Abadiano plant in Spain, which runs as a hybrid site before full conversion to military production
- The acquisition lifts AEQUITA's automotive portfolio to roughly €5 billion in revenue, per chairman Axel Geuer
Rheinmetall signed the sale of its Power Systems division — around €2 billion in 2025 revenue, 6,250 employees, the Pierburg, Kolbenschmidt and Motorservice brands — to Munich investment house AEQUITA on 3 June for a provisional €350 million, completing its exit from the automotive supply business and leaving the group a pure-play defence prime.
The purchase price covers 100% of the shares and is subject to standard adjustment mechanisms until closing, expected in the fourth quarter of 2026 pending regulatory approval. AEQUITA will run the business as an independent entity under its established brands, retaining all roughly 6,250 employees worldwide. Rheinmetall books a further impairment of about €200 million against the deteriorating automotive market. CEO Armin Papperger framed the move plainly: the group is concentrating on 'the high-margin business with military customers'.
What was kept is the more instructive list. The KS Huayu AluTech casting joint venture stays with Rheinmetall as a discontinued operation. The stake in Dermalog SensorTec — biometric sensors — moves permanently into the Weapon and Ammunition division at Neuss. And Pierburg's Abadiano plant in Spain is excluded from the sale entirely: it will run as a hybrid civilian–military site before converting fully to military production.
The transaction closes the arc begun with the large- and small-bore piston divestments in 2023/24, and makes Rheinmetall the only top-tier European land-systems prime without a civilian hedge — at the moment its order book is dominated by multi-year government demand, including the €5.7 billion Romania vehicle order signed the previous week.
The structural read. A €2 billion-revenue division sold for a provisional €350 million is a distress-priced exit from a sector Rheinmetall expects to keep deteriorating — but the Abadiano carve-out shows what the group actually considers scarce. Cash from civilian assets is incidental; industrial floor space convertible to munitions output is not. The sale and the plant conversion are the same capital-allocation decision read from both ends. First reported in Signal No. 74.
Sources: Rheinmetall AG, AEQUITA SE & Co. KGaA.
First reported in Signal No. 74, 3 June 2026.