Chemicals and materials manufacturing conglomerate DuPont de Nemours Inc. — widely known as DuPont — plans to split the company three ways in a transformative move, while also appointing a new CEO who will take over in June.

The plan involves the separations of DuPont’s Electronics and Water businesses, with a new DuPont moving forward as a diversified industrial company.

Announced May 23, the company expects to execute the split in 18 to 24 months and to announce leadership of the standalone, publicly-traded companies before that happens.

Meanwhile, the company named current CFO Lori Koch as its new CEO, effective June 1, succeeding Ed Breen, who will retain his role as Executive Chairman. Antonella Franzen, currently CFO of DuPont’s Water & Protection unit, will take over as DuPont CFO.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity to deliver long-term, sustainable shareholder value through the creation of three strong, industry-leading companies,” Breen said in a news release. “The three-way separation will unlock incremental value for shareholders and customers and also create new opportunities for employees. Critically, each company will have greater flexibility to pursue their own focused growth strategies, including portfolio enhancing M&A.”

DuPont provided a snapshot breakdown of what the three standalone companies will look like:

New DuPont: “A premier diversified industrial company powered by deep materials science and application engineering expertise, industry-leading innovation, top-tier manufacturing capabilities, and iconic brands such as Tyvek, Kevlar and Nomex.” 

• New DuPont will consist of the existing businesses within DuPont’s Water & Protection segment (excluding Water Solutions); the majority of businesses within Industrial Solutions (including healthcare); and the retained businesses reported in Corporate (including adhesives). Those businesses had 2023 net sales of about $6.6 billion and operating EBITDA margin of approximately 24%.

Electronics: “A leading global provider of differentiated electronics materials including key consumables used in semiconductor chip manufacturing, as well as advanced electronic materials enabling reliable signal integrity, power management and thermal management.” 

• Electronics will consist of DuPont’s existing Semiconductor Technologies and Interconnect Solutions lines of business, along with the electronics-related product lines from Industrial Solutions. Those businesses had 2023 net sales of about $4.0 billion and operating EBITDA margin of 29%.

Water: “A global technology leader with a comprehensive portfolio of water filtration and purification solutions with leading technologies in reverse osmosis, ion exchange and ultrafiltration. Its solutions provide critical components and systems that generate clean and fit-for-purpose water across a variety of market segments including industrial water and energy, life sciences and specialties, municipal and desalination, and residential and commercial.

• Water will consist of DuPont’s current Water Solutions line, which had 2023 net sales of about $1.5 billion and operating EBITDA margin of 24%.

Context

The reorganization will mark the second major split for DuPont in a decade. In 2015, DuPont and Dow merged in a deal valued at $130 billion, in which the companies then split into three companies upon its completion in 2017. It created DowDuPont, a holding company with three divisions — Agriculture, Materials Science and Specialty Products.

In 2019, DuPont completed its spin-off from DowDuPont.