Electrical engineering corporation ABB has announced it has signed an agreement to divest its Robotics division to SoftBank Group Corp. for an enterprise value of US$5.375 billion (c. £4bn).
The deal includes the agreement to not pursue its earlier intention to spin-off the business as a separately listed company.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and further customary closing conditions and is expected to close in mid-to-late 2026.
As a result of the signing of the agreement ABB will adjust its reporting structure and move to three business areas.
As of the fourth quarter 2025, the robotics division will be reported as discontinued operations.
Concurrently, the Machine Automation division, which together with ABB Robotics currently forms the Robotics & Discrete Automation business area, will become a part of the Process Automation business area.
Upon closing, the divestment will result in a non-operational pre-tax book gain of approximately $2.4bn (c. £1.8bn) with expected cash proceeds, net of transaction costs, of approximately $5.3bn (c. £4bn).
The expected separation costs related to the divestment are approximately $200 million (c. £149m), about half of which was already included in our 2025 guidance.
ABB’s current best estimate of the transaction-related cash tax outflows in respect of the local business carve-out is in the range of $400m – $500m (c. £299m – £374m).
The ABB Robotics division has a workforce of approximately 7,000. With 2024 revenues of $2.3bn (c. £1.72bn) it represented about 7% of ABB Group revenues and had an Operational EBITA margin of 12.1%.
Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group, Masayoshi Son, said: “SoftBank’s next frontier is Physical AI. Together with ABB Robotics, we will unite world-class technology and talent under our shared vision to fuse Artificial Super Intelligence and robotics —driving a groundbreaking evolution that will propel humanity forward.”
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