You are Élodie Vasseur, CEO of Lutèce Mobility in Lyon. Your largest customer has put its next contract out to tender, your in-house technology bet has just hit a wall, and your investment committee has six weeks and €90 million to decide what to do.
The situation
It is 14 May 2026. Lutèce designs and builds power-electronics modules for European electric vehicles and trains: 2,300 people, plants in Lyon and Wrocław, €620 million of revenue at a 9% EBIT margin (€55.8 million), and €140 million of net debt. One German rail manufacturer buys 31% of everything Lutèce makes. It wants silicon-carbide modules, the next generation of power electronics, and has issued a request for proposals with a binding supplier decision on 30 June.
This morning your head of research told you that the in-house silicon-carbide programme, eighteen months and €22 million in, has hit a technical problem it may not clear in time. For the year's €90 million envelope there are four paths: continue in-house (€60 million more); license a proven American design (€45 million plus royalties); walk away and keep selling the existing line (€0, a small, certain gain, and a customer expected to start buying elsewhere); or license and keep the in-house work going as a hedge (€75 million). The lenders' limit is 3.0 times net debt to EBITDA, and the in-house path's worst case would break it on its own.
The board made you CEO with a mandate to take the margin to 12%. Your head of research makes no secret of which path he wants. Before anyone reads the engineers' odds, you want the committee to write one thing at the top of the page: the result below which it will call this year a failure.