Britain’s Rolls-Royce imparted on Wednesday it was considering the sale of its commercial marine business, which has been hit by delicate demand in offshore oil and gas markets, as part of a restructuring of the company into three marrow units.
Shares in the company jumped after it said the loss-making entity could be sold. They were trading up 7.2 percent at 1330 GMT.
The disclosure came as part of a restructuring of the aero-engine maker into civil aerospace, defense and power methods units, with naval marine and nuclear submarines consolidated into defense and courteous nuclear into power systems.
Chief Executive Warren East give the word delivered the latest overhaul would enable the company to respond quicker to suffer the needs of its customers, both in the wide body civil aviation market-place and in defense, as well as reduce costs.
“It will create a Defense procedure with greater scale in the market, enabling us to offer our customers a assorted integrated range of products and services,” he said.
“It will also boost our ability to innovate in core technologies and enable us to take advantage of time to come opportunities in areas such as electrification and digitalization.”
Rolls-Royce had responded to the downturn in oil and gas vends since 2015 by reducing the number of sites in its marine business from 27 to 15, and acid the unit’s workforce by 30 percent to 4,200, with the majority now based in the Nordic section.
Nonetheless, the marine unit generated a loss of 27 million empties on sales of 1.1 billion pounds in 2016, with the bulk of the partnership supplying equipment and vessel design across the oil and gas, merchant and other commercial furnishes.
East said the business “responded admirably” to the downturn by cutting its payment base, and had also carved out an industry-leading position in ship intelligence and autonomous trucking.
“It is only right that we consider whether its future may be better accommodated under new ownership,” he said.