Volkswagen might spin off Lamborghini and Ducati by year end

Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess has confirmed potential spinning off of its premium Italian brands — Lamborghini, Ducati, and Italdesign Giugiaro — to streamline its operation and focus on mass-production of electric cars.

Ducati is a motorcycle manufacturing brand, while Italdesign Giugiaro is a design and engineering brand, and Audi owns both through its Italian subsidiary Lamborghini.

The luxury sports cars and SUVs manufacturing company Lamborghini is owned by VW through its subsidiary, Audi.

In a conference call with analysts on Monday, the CEO said that the company has been working to restructure the three Italian brands to carve them into a separate business.

However, the CEO said that while the company is bringing this into a legal structure, no divestments have been made yet. "But it's on our agenda," the CEO added.

Reuters reported last month that the firm was drawing up plans to either spin off or bring out an initial public offering of the brands.

VW might follow the footsteps of Fiat Chrysler's spinning off of Ferrari (RACE) in 2016 as a separate company with its stock market listing.

Stefano Domenicali, the current CEO of Lamborghini, has already announced his plans of taking a new job as the CEO of Formula 1 racing. Stephan Winkelmann will take his position as the CEO and President of the brand — a position he held between 2005 to 2016 — in conjugation with his current role of President of Bugatti, another VW brand. According to some reports, VW is also considering spinning off Bugatti; however, neither VW nor Bugatti has confirmed the news.

Some analysts suggest that if VW successfully manages to implement these structural changes by focusing on the core brands like Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche, it could increase its market value to $237 billion, closer to Tesla's $400 billion.

German factories in Emden and Hanover will be converted to build electric cars as part of a 73 billion euros ($86 billion) investment plan to ramp up the development of zero-emission and self-driving cars, the company said on Monday.