A high government of American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. mentioned Wednesday that “there isn’t any course of to promote the corporate,” echoing its formal response to a latest report that it was exploring a sale.

Requested to handle the Bloomberg report from final month, CFO and Vice President Christopher Could mentioned the Detroit-based automotive provider is “targeted on our standalone plan to create worth for shareholders.”

Could’s feedback got here in the course of the livestreamed Deutsche Financial institution World Auto Trade Convention. It marked the primary time an American Axle government publicly addressed the rumor of a sale, although the corporate did concern a written assertion shorty after the report was printed.

To the opposite main query looming over American Axle – is it ready to outlive the automotive business’s transition to electrical automobiles? – Could mentioned, “Completely, sure.”

Rooted in conventional gasoline engines, the corporate has made large strikes to impress its portfolio and persuade traders its enterprise might be rebuilt round EVs. Its $135 million acquisition of German provider Tekfor Group and $15 million funding in Silicon Valley enterprise capital agency Autotech Ventures are latest examples of its electrification push, although lower than 5 % of income is tied to EVs.

“What’s now in all probability the No. 1 factor on folks’s minds is terminal worth … Can American Axle play in an electrified world in perpetuity, and I believe we consider very strongly inside the corporate, completely, sure,” Could mentioned. “We’ll simply proceed to put up new enterprise win after new enterprise win, and we’ll in the end convert these those who have doubt on our terminal worth.”