Earlier this year, the holding company sold 4% of Ferrari's capital in order to finance a €1bn buyback of its own shares—potentially equivalent to 5% of outstanding shares—and to continue diversifying its investments.
The arbitrage could be welcomed by fans of mathematical logic and financial engineering: Ferrari's valuation is very high, even exorbitant, while that of its parent company suffers from a significant discount of its net asset value, which has been hovering around 50% for a long time.
However, the market has only moderately appreciated this, as the share price has continued to fall and the discount has widened. To date, Exor has a net asset value of €36bn, with a market capitalization of only €17bn.
The holding company headed by John Elkann still has a long way to go to build a second pillar among its asset base capable of supporting the whole alongside Ferrari. The ongoing difficulties at Stellantis and the stagnation at CNH—which has just launched a restructuring program—are not currently helping in this regard.
Still far behind the prancing horse brand in terms of asset value are the other pillars: a nearly 20% stake in Dutch company Philips; the Lingotto in Turin, reconfigured as a shopping center; and a portfolio of private investments, including stakes in Institut Mérieux, Christian Louboutin, The Economist Group, Via Transportation, and Welltec.
This summer, Iveco's civilian division was sold to Tata Motors, and its defense division to Leonardo. Clearly, the market was unconcerned by the success of this transaction, which will generously replenish the company's cash reserves.
Since 2009, Exor has provided its shareholders with a return more than twice that of the MSCI World Index. In H1 2025, this outperformance reached 5%, supported in particular by the intensive share buyback program currently underway.
