The news does not come as a surprise given that in March 2020, OMV announced a disposal program of EUR 2bn until the end of 2021.

OMV announced that they intend to sell their Slovenian part of the company, by which they would be leaving the Slovenian market after a close to a 30-year presence. OMV is a relatively large player on the Slovenian market with a market share of roughly 21% (120 service stations). To put things into a perspective, Petrol has 318 service stations as of end September 2020.

The mentioned news does not come as a surprise given that in March 2020, OMV announced a disposal program of EUR 2bn until the end of 2021. The company made progress in 2020 and was able to sign agreements for the three assets of the first divestment package: the sale of the 51% stake in the gas logistics subsidiary Gas Connect Austria, the sale of the OMV filling station business in Germany and the sale of the Upstream business in Kazakhstan. The closing of all three divestments is expected in 2021 – subject to the required regulatory approvals. In total, the first package will lead to a substantial deleveraging effect of more than EUR 1 bn.

According to the CEO of OMV, the reason for the withdrawal from Slovenia lies in the fact that OMV does not sell their own petrol and diesel fuel through the chain of petrol stations in Slovenia and the company stated that they would reduce that.

As a reminder, OMV also left Croatia by selling their stations to CRODUX, which was then recently acquired by Petrol. To read more about the acquisition click here.

 In 2019, OMV Slovenia noted EUR 803m in sales and a net profit of 24.9m.