I can't say this comes as a surprise. The NACCO stock holders have been clamoring for this type of "spin off" for years. Their feeling was that the lift truck business was holding down the stock price due to it's continuing inability to generate continuosly significant margins at the same time they grew share. North American Coal Co. is the goose that keeps on laying the golden egg much more consistently than the lift truck group can manage. It will be intersting to see if the lift truck group can improve their situation by standing alone or fall further into the hole of disapperaing market share and profitability that they have managed to obtain over the last several years.
They do have several pluses that they would bring to the table in a sale, merger/aquisition scenario. These would namely be - strong brand names with Hyster and Yale (at least in the US), a good dealer network. Their product offerings in the counterbalnced segments are good. Their Class III products are also good and benefit from Yale's success in this segment over the years. Their Class II performance would be non existant without the Lowes store business. They also have a large national accounts sales group that is a plus.
The weaknesses that I see are - a very mediocre management group that practices the "you will do this or else!" approach and expects a higher level of "workaholicism" from their subordinates than they exhibit themselves. The lack of both a strong knowledge base, proven high performance and productivity driven product designs coupled with the massive amount of times they go through reorganizations without really understanding what therir dealers and ciustomers need or want will not help the "new" NMHG be any more successful than the old NMHG. The bottom line is that the industry has passed them long ago and they are always trying to catch up.
I am a long time retired so I am not saying these things to make myself look good or NACCO look bad, these are just my observations and thoughts driven by 40+ years in this business. Our industry has changed dramatically over the last 10 to 15 years and not all of us have seen or understood these changes. The paradigm has shifted several times and continues to evolve. Potentially the best scenario for a successful future would be to sell themselves to or merge with a much more globally savy lift truck company such as but not limited to Linde.