Aumann AG
Good Biz, Temporary Setback, Only 40% Above Liquidation Value
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Aumann is a German-based manufacturer of automated production lines. The ticker is $AAG. (It also trades over the counter in the U.S. as $AUUMF, but we don’t recommend that route due to limited liquidity.)
We’ve been following Aumann since January, when it was trading near its Net Current Asset Value (NCAV). NCAVs, or “net-nets”, are companies that are valued at less than the cash or liquid assets they would have left over after paying off all liabilities, offering a margin of safety even in the event of liquidation.
In January, Aumann wasn’t strictly a net-net—but it got pretty close. We started buying at approximately €10.5 per share, roughly a 25% premium to its NCAV.
Shares now trade at around ~€12.5 which is a premium of 40%.1 While that’s less cheap than before, it’s still pretty cheap.
Investing in net-nets has long been a play in the value investor’s toolkit. First invented by Graham, it presents a clear and simple value proposition: you’re buying the company for less than what you’d conservatively expect to receive if it were sold immediately. That concept provides a theoretical floor to the price.
However, realizing the company’s intrinsic value depends on a few key assumptions. We believe Aumann satisfies all of them.
But first, some background.
Aumann is a German engineering company that designs and builds specialized machinery for fully automated production lines. These production lines primarily turn out electric vehicle components like stators, rotors, inverters, battery modules, and fuel cell systems.
In simpler terms, what this means is that Aumann does not produce the components themselves but provides the manufacturing solutions to companies that do.
Historically rooted in winding technology for internal combustion engine components, Aumann has pivoted toward “e-mobility,” which now accounts for ~80% of its revenue. With global operations in Germany, China, and the U.S., the company serves major auto manufacturing regions and is also expanding into adjacent markets. Its acquisition of LACOM in late 2023 enhanced its offerings in electrode coating and membrane-electrode assemblies for batteries and fuel cells, strengthening its position as a one-stop automation provider in the clean mobility supply chain.
The company is majority-owned (51%) by MBB SE, a reputable German industrial holding company known for acquiring and growing technology-driven mid-sized firms. MBB has backed Aumann since 2015, guiding its IPO in 2017 and supporting its pivot toward e-mobility.2
In our view, Aumann’s CEO Sebastian Roll has emphasized a disciplined capital allocation strategy, focusing on profitable niches, measured growth, and selective M&A—especially targeting expansion in the U.S. rather than China. The LACOM acquisition from a bankruptcy estate illustrates his opportunistic but cautious approach.
Aumann’s legacy division was lately rebranded as “Next Automation,” to better target high-margin industries like aerospace and life sciences, aligning with labor automation trends and energy transition tailwinds.
The first, and perhaps most important, requirement for any net-net candidate is that it must show durable profitability—even if only modestly so—over the long term. Value can quickly get destroyed in a money-losing venture.
The secular trend toward electric mobility speaks strongly in Aumann’s favor. Of all the new cars registered in Europe today (which we use as a proxy for sales), only 15% are battery electric vehicles, which provides a long runway for future growth.
Indeed, in the first four months of 2025, new EV registrations have returned to strong growth after a difficult 2024. Growth was 25% YTD over Jan-Apr ‘24 (these are registrations in Europe, not for export).
Reflecting this, Aumann’s order backlog and intake plummeted in 2024 but intake has recently turned upward and backlog is beginning to stabilize.
Beyond the short term, government policies (EU’s emissions regulations; investments in localized supply chains) will also support this trend and underpin robust demand for Aumann’s products.
The second requirement for safely investing in a net-net is that management must present a credible plan for putting surplus cash to work (via dividends, buybacks, M&A). Cash sitting on the balance sheet is no good to anyone.
In the last two years, share count has decreased by 6.5% through buybacks. An additional 10% of shares outstanding were bought back in April through a tender offer. We expect this trend to continue.
Aumann now has €120m left in cash. The company’s market cap is €160m.3
Management has stated that it’s actively looking at M&A opportunities in North America, which would diversify the company’s revenue base.
The third requirement is that stated net asset values should genuinely reflect what could be realized in the market. Holding an auction is pointless if nobody shows up to bid.
This brings us to the topic of Aumann’s recent share price drop which is linked, generally, to the current auto industry slowdown and also, more specifically, to the declining fortunes of its closest peer, Manz AG. Like Aumann, Manz produced equipment for lithium-ion battery cells, battery module, and pack assembly lines.
But Manz’s weakness was in project concentration. It had fewer customers and larger orders (gigafactory deployments) which put it in direct competition with Asian equipment makers like Wuxi Lead and Yinghe.
When European battery plant projects were delayed or canceled in 2023-24, Manz’s incoming orders in the Mobility & Battery segment dried up dramatically. Unlike Aumann, the company 1) had no cash cushion to weather the storm, and 2) was thinly capitalized and relied on too much debt.
By the summer of 2024 the company was in crisis mode, overhauling management and implementing cost-cutting measures. But it was too little, too late. With only €2.7 m new orders in Q3, the viability of the business became questionable.
By mid-December, the situation reached a breaking point and Manz announced it was filing for insolvency proceedings due to “illiquidity… and over-indebtedness.” In an ad-hoc disclosure, the company revealed that creditors refused to provide further funding and an advanced-stage discussion with a new investor fell apart.
Though the market has penalized Aumann’s share price on fears that it might suffer a similar fate to Manz, we see that sell-off as misplaced—and a good opportunity for long-term investors.
The two companies are worlds apart. With the exception of 2020/21, Aumann turned a nice profit every year since 2013. Margins are healthy and stable. It sits on ample cash to ride out a protracted slump and carries virtually no debt. Management is shrewd and agile.
Manz, on the other hand, has been unprofitable every year since 2013 (except, ironically, in 2020), with poor cash conversion. It carried too much debt and chased multiple niche categories (batteries for gigafactories, displays, etc.) that put it into direct competition with Chinese suppliers.
But the important piece of information for us here is that the insolvency proceedings proved that Manz’s assets were still attractive to many buyers. By April 2025, three major parts of Manz’s business were sold off to different parties.
Tesla agreed to purchase its core assets, including the Reutlingen headquarters and production site (in southwest Germany), in order to absorb Manz’s automation engineering capabilities.
Though the price was undisclosed, it’s fair to assume Tesla paid the administrator’s fair-value estimate for the Reutlingen plant, very likely at or slightly below the impaired book value of the assets transferred.
Given than Aumann holds 75% of its market cap in cash, the chance that Aumann would even enter German insolvency proceedings is remote; banks and suppliers would still be paid.
Even if things did go horribly wrong (unlikely—but let’s game it out), a solvent sale deal is far more likely than an insolvency fire-sale. Any real-world deal would be struck before insolvency and would, by necessity, involve MBB negotiating around that hard cash backing, with an added customary 20–30% control premium on top of it.
In short: Manz’s 2025 distressed asset sales demonstrate that even in a fire-sale there is strategic appetite for German automation know-how (from OEMs, tier-1 or Private Equity)—but Aumann’s vastly stronger balance-sheet means a solvent transaction is overwhelmingly more likely, making NCAV a credible floor.
We have so much more to say about this company, but we’ve touched on the most salient points. We’ll be writing more about Aumann in the near future. In the meantime, we have built up a 6% position of our portfolio and hope to bring that up to 8% before its next earnings release in August.
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NCAV increased because of buybacks.
MBB acquired a majority stake (75%) in Aumann in 2015 and increased its ownership to 93.5% by 2017, the same year it executed an IPO, the timing of which coincided with a notable increase in Aumann’s investments and strategic focus on expanding its e-mobility capabilities.
Some platforms might show market cap as €180m but that doesn’t yet reflect the reduced share count.