Prysmian S.p.A. is an Italian company with headquarters in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city has ...

, specialising in the production of

electrical cable An electrical cable is an assembly of one or more wires running side by side or bundled, which is used to carry electric current. One or more electrical cables and their corresponding connectors may be formed into a ''cable assembly'', which ...

for use in the

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat ...

and telecom sectors and for

optical fibres An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass ( silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a mean ...

. Prysmian is present in North America with 23 plants, 48 in Europe, 13 in LATAM, 7 MEAT, 13 APAC. It is the world leader in the production of cables for wind farms. The company is listed on the

Milan Stock Exchange Borsa Italiana, based in Milan, is the Italian stock exchange. It manages and organises domestic market, regulating procedures for admission and listing of companies and intermediaries and supervising disclosures for listed companies.italy24.il ...

in the

FTSE MIB The FTSE MIB (Milano Indice di Borsa) (the S&P/MIB prior to June 2009) is the benchmark stock market index for the Borsa Italiana, the Italian national stock exchange, which superseded the MIB-30 in September 2004. The index consists of the 40 mo ...

index. On 4 December 2017, it took over 100% of the

General Cable General Cable is an American multinational cable manufacturing company based in Highland Heights, Kentucky, Highland Heights, Kentucky, with sales offices and manufacturing facilities in several countries. General Cable manufactures and distribut ...

group in the US, to then complete the merger by incorporation the following year, after the antitrust approval by the respective countries.

History

The beginning

The company originated in 1879 as Pirelli Cavi e Sistemi. In 1881, it secured a contract to produce submarine telegraph cables for

military engineering Military engineering is loosely defined as the art, science, and practice of designing and building military works and maintaining lines of military transport and military communications. Military engineers are also responsible for logistics b ...

. In 1886, it opened a submarine cable production plant in

La Spezia La Spezia (, or , ; in the local Spezzino dialect) is the capital city of the province of La Spezia and is located at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the southern part of the Liguria region of Italy. La Spezia is the second largest cit ...

. It later helped to lay the entire Italian

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

network on behalf of the Italian

state-owned company A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn profit for the government ...

Telegrafi dello Stato, and to install the

electrical grid An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...

for domestic use in

.Pirelli, Stories of People and Inventions: Emanuele Jona
Fondazione Pirelli It also laid telegraph cables in the colonies of

Italian East Africa Italian East Africa ( it, Africa Orientale Italiana, AOI) was an Italian colony in the Horn of Africa. It was formed in 1936 through the merger of Italian Somalia, Italian Eritrea, and the newly occupied Ethiopian Empire, conquered in the Secon ...

. In 1925, it produced 5,150 km of submarine telegraph cabling for Italcable for communications between Italy and South America. Its collaboration with the

Italian government The government of Italy is in the form of a democratic republic, and was established by a constitution in 1948. It consists of legislative, executive, and judicial subdivisions, as well as a Head of State, or President. The Italian Constitutio ...

continued with the laying of cables for the Italian interurban telephone network.

Prysmian

In 2005, Prysmian S.r.l. was created by

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, Hong ...

after acquiring

Pirelli Pirelli & C. S.p.A. is a multinational tyre manufacturer based in Milan, Italy. The company, which has been listed on the Milan Stock Exchange since 1922, is the 6th-largest tyre manufacturer and is focused on the consumer production of tyres ...

& C. S.p.A's Cables and Systems business. After restructuring the organisation of the group's internal activities, the company decided to sell down its investment in the cable market. The figure negotiated was EUR 1.3 billion: Goldman Sachs gave Pirelli 225 million and the rest (more than one billion) was a debt that would be paid off the back of the new business. The company, led by Valerio Battista from 2005, was then a public company. Since 3 May 2007, it has been listed on the

and on 24 September 2007 it joined the S&P MIB index of the biggest Italian companies. At the end of 2009, Goldman Sachs decided to sell down its stake, which was completed in March 2010. In February 2011, Prysmian successfully made a takeover bid of EUR 840 million for Dutch company Draka, with headquarters in Eindhoven, which at the time was fourth in the world in the cable and optical fibre sector. In December 2017, it bought the American (and rival) company

based in

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to ...

. A transaction of almost three billion dollars, consisting of equity (1.5 billion) and financial debt. This merged the leading cable-making company in the world in terms of revenue (Prysmian) and the fourth (General Cable), creating a group with a revenue of EUR 10 billion, EBIDTA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) of EUR 840 million and over 28,000 employees.

Acquisition of General Cable

The General Cable group was valued at 3 billion dollars with a price premium of approximately 81% to General Cable's share value on the last day of trading. The acquisition was unanimously approved by the two

Boards of Directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

and would create a company present in 50 countries with 31,000 employees, which could generate revenue of 11 billion dollars a year, based on estimates from the 2017 financial statements. The integration was expected to cost 220 million dollars.Prysmian to acquire General Cables for $30.00 per Share in Cash
Prysmian Group The price per share paid to General Cable was 30 dollars, versus a Prysmian dividend that was halved in 2011 after the acquisition of Draka, and stable at 43 cents per share. The General Cable group has one billion dollars of debt. Already the leading cable company in the world, with such "pro-forma" earnings, it would become twice as large as its second main competitor. Prysmian declared that it expects to increase its capital by more than 500 million in light of further acquisitions. The transaction was subject to approval by the antitrust authorities of the two countries. Its completion would create a

market concentration In economics, market concentration is a function of the number of firms and their respective shares of the total production (alternatively, total capacity or total reserves) in a market. In any industry, a handful of firms that hold a signifi ...

in a strategic sector for public safety and economic development, which was already established by no more than ten competitors across Italy, the US and China. Other

oligopolies An oligopoly (from Greek ὀλίγος, ''oligos'' "few" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. Oligopolies often result fro ...

exist in the fixed and mobile telephony sectors in various countries, partly due to the existence of natural monopolies.

Activity

The company is the global leader in the cable systems sector. Specifically, Prysmian produces and lays underground and submarine cables for the

transmission Transmission may refer to: Medicine, science and technology * Power transmission ** Electric power transmission ** Propulsion transmission, technology allowing controlled application of power *** Automatic transmission *** Manual transmission ** ...

and

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...

of electricity, as well as specialised cables for use in various industrial contexts, and medium- and low-voltage cables for construction and infrastructure. For telecoms, the Group produces copper cables, optical cables and

optical fibre An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...

cables for the transmission of data, video and sound. On the customer's request, Prysmian also Designs and produces key systems and takes care of post-installation

maintenance Maintenance may refer to: Biological science * Maintenance of an organism * Maintenance respiration Non-technical maintenance * Alimony, also called ''maintenance'' in British English * Champerty and maintenance, two related legal doctri ...

. Every year, Prysmian invests more than EUR 100 million in research and development. This has allowed the Group to develop innovations like BendBrightXS 180μm, the narrowest bend-insensitive optical fibre, and FlexRibbon, which, with 6,912 fibres, is the optical cable with the highest number of fibres in the sector. The company also developed the P-Laser technology for cabling systems, which combines greater transmission capacity and eco-sustainability, using 100% recyclable materials and cutting carbon emissions by 40%. By 2022, Prysmian has planned to invest around EUR 450 million to net-zero the Group's CO₂ emissions and improve the sustainability of its supply chain. An ambitious commitment, aligned with the objectives of the

Paris Agreement The Paris Agreement (french: Accord de Paris), often referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on climate change. Adopted in 2015, the agreement covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and ...

, which would be executed with support from the non-profit organisation

Carbon Trust The Carbon Trust was developed and launched in 1999-2001 as part of the development of the Climate Change Levy (CCL), a tax on business energy use that still operates today. The Carbon Trust was originally funded by around £50m of tax revenue g ...

. For 2021, Prysmian confirmed the launch of the new Leonardo da Vinci cable-laying vessel, which will be the longest in the world at 171 metres. In Italy, Prysmian is active in Merlino,

Giovinazzo Giovinazzo ( Barese: ) is a town, '' comune'' (municipality) and former bishopric within the Metropolitan City of Bari, Apulia region, southeastern Italy. History It was a small fortified centre of the Romans, who called it Natolium, maybe bui ...

, Pignataro Maggiore,

Quattordio Quattordio (Quatòrdi in Piedmontese) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Alessandria in the Italian region Piedmont, located about southeast of Turin and about west of Alessandria. Quattordio borders the following municipalities: ...

Livorno Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 158,493 residents in December 2017. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn (prono ...

Pozzuoli Pozzuoli (; ; ) is a city and '' comune'' of the Metropolitan City of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. It is the main city of the Phlegrean Peninsula. History Pozzuoli began as the Greek colony of ''Dicaearchia'' ( el, Δικα ...

and

Battipaglia Battipaglia () is a municipality (''comune'') in the province of Salerno, Campania, south-western Italy. Famed as a production place of buffalo mozzarella, Battipaglia is the economic hub of the Sele plain. History Formerly part of the ancien ...

. Since the acquisition of General Cable, it is present in more than 50 countries with 104 facilities and over 28,000 employees.

Shareholders

* BlackRock, Inc. – 5.2% * UBS AG – 4.0% * T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. – 3.9% * Crédit Agricole S.A. – 3.7% * Sun Life Financial, Inc. – 3.2% * AXA S.A. – 3.1% * Schroders PLC – 3.0% * The Vanguard Group, Inc. – 2.8% * Hardman Johnston Global Advisors LLC – 2.7% * Others – 68.4% Nasdaq, January 2021.Ownership Structure of the Group
Prysmian Group

References

External links

* *
Prysmian Australia
{{authority control Construction and civil engineering companies of Italy Manufacturing companies based in Milan Wire and cable manufacturers Electronics companies established in 2011 Italian brands Multinational companies headquartered in Italy 2005 mergers and acquisitions 2007 initial public offerings Construction and civil engineering companies established in 2011 Italian companies established in 2011