Johnson Controls,  a global multi-industrial company, said it wants to exit the automotive seating and interiors businesses to focus on its higher-margin building efficiency and automotive battery operations.

The company , whose customers include most major automakers, said its options included a spinoff, divestiture, joint venture or sale of its seating business in pieces.

Automotive seating at $17.53 billion and automotive interiors at $4.5 billion accounted for about 51 per cent of the company's $42.83 billion revenue in fiscal 2014. About $10.1 billion of combined seating and interiors revenue came from North America, $9.5 billion from Europe and $2.3 billion from Asia.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak estimated the value of the seating business at about $7.3 billion. It had a five per cent profit margin in the last fiscal year, compared with 11.8 per cent from the building efficiency business and nine per cent from automotive batteries.

Johnson Controls' automotive business reported one per cent growth in revenue, excluding the impact of the strong dollar, in the quarter ended March 31.

On a call with Wall Street analysts, Johnson Controls CEO Alex Molinaroli said he preferred to sell the whole seating business to a single buyer, but if need be, it could be sold piecemeal.-Reuters