Hyundai Mobis mulls selling lamp business to France’s OPmobility

Yonhap News

Hyundai Mobis Co., the auto parts maker under South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group, is seeking to sell its lamp business to French auto-parts supplier OPmobility SE.

According to sources from the automotive industry on Thursday, Hyundai Mobis and OPmobility are currently in negotiations over contractual terms, including the sale price, production assets, and the scope of the business transfer.

OPmobility specializes in lamps and exterior components and supplies major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Hyundai Mobis had reached out to various potential buyers since early this year, including LG Electronics Inc.‘s Vehicle Solution (VS) division, to divest its underperforming lamp business, but the sale process stalled after the company failed to find a suitable buyer.

According to the securities industry, the company’s lamp business revenue last year is estimated at 2 trillion won ($1.66 billion), accounting for approximately 16 percent of its total components division revenue of 12.51 trillion won.

Hyundai Mobis has been accelerating efforts to reorganize its portfolio around profitability.

The company aims to strengthen its business fundamentals in line with Hyundai Motor Group’s broader transition toward electrification and software-centric future mobility.

It is currently focusing resources on software-driven sectors, including core electrification components such as power electronics, inverters, and batteries, as well as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving sensors.

Automotive lamps are traditional hardware components whose designs and specifications vary by vehicle model, making mass standardization difficult.

They are often custom-designed from the early stages of new vehicle development to meet automaker requirements.

Furthermore, as automakers shift their investment priorities toward electrification and software, the strategic importance of lamps has relatively declined, leading to growing pressure to reduce unit costs.

Given the nature of lamp components, where performance differentiation is limited, it has also become increasingly difficult to compete with Chinese suppliers that pursue aggressive low-price strategies.

As a result, the lamp business is widely seen as suffering from low profitability.

However, Hyundai Mobis is not expected to simply exit the lamp business; instead, it will likely seek synergies by maintaining a strategic partnership even after the sale.

This is because lamps remain an essential component for vehicles despite their low profitability.

The company’s decision to select France’s OPmobility, formerly known as Plastic Omnium, as the preferred buyer stems from this consideration.

In this scenario, even if the lamp division is transferred to OPmobility, it would help in retaining the existing workforce.

“This is a win-win strategy that maximizes business value by transferring a non-core operation to a company with specialized expertise, rather than simply shutting it down,” said an industry official.

However, some observers point out that labor-management issues could emerge as a variable in the sale process.

Hyundai Motor Group has repeatedly faced union resistance over employment succession and severance compensation when restructuring non-core businesses.