Eureka Case 30 min Undergrad

Tender Shanghai

You are Tomás Ibargüengoitia-Lerma, 47, Head of Strategy at Voltagrid Ibérica, a Bilbao-headquartered medium-voltage power-equipment firm (€1.1B revenue, 3,400 employees). For three years your firm has been losing public-utility tenders in Europe and Latin America to Shanghai Electric. The board has asked for a strategic response by Q3.

The situation

Voltagrid designs and builds 36 kV–145 kV switchgear, transformers and substations — the gear that sits between national grids and industrial off-takers. The firm is the #2 player in Iberia and ranks 5th in Europe behind Siemens Energy, Hitachi Energy, GE Vernova and Schneider. The Chinese state-backed entrant, Shanghai Electric, entered the European market in 2021 and the Latin American market more aggressively from 2022.

Over the last 8 quarters, Voltagrid has won 14 of 38 EU+LatAm public-utility tenders. Shanghai Electric has won 19. The remaining 5 went to the bigger Western primes. The pattern is unambiguous: when Voltagrid loses, the loss is to Shanghai Electric, on price, by 18–34%. Voltagrid's CFO has prepared three response options. The CEO wants Tomás's recommendation in 11 days.

Your job in this case: read the tender-by-tender pattern and the cost-component breakdown, model the response shape, and pick one of three postures. The board's question: "Where do we still have a structural right to win?"

The decision

Where do you still have a right to win?

  • A · Match on price (defend the book)
  • B · Narrow product to where EMM breaks
  • C · Exit the segment

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