In recent months, the electric vehicle manufacturer Cake has struggled to bring in new millions in what founder and CEO Stefan Ytterborn called a “bridging round”, an intended financing that would be enough for a larger issue later in the year.
But it won’t be like that. Now the automotive company’s board is submitting a bankruptcy application.
“Unreal. Sad. Painful,” reads Stefan Ytterborn’s first comment via SMS to Breakit.
That it was empty in the coffers, and that a bankruptcy lay in the direction of danger, most people understood when Breakit revealed last week that the company had suspended salary payments to the employees.
“The details of our latest issue have dragged on and therefore a certain delay”, said Stefan Ytterborn at the time.
Cake’s owner list includes, among others, AMF Pension, the oil family Lundin, Creandum and Stefan Ytterborn himself.
In conversation with Dagens industri, which was the first to Report about the bankruptcy filing, Stefan Ytterborn points to the current, extremely tough conditions on the capital market.
“Climate issues are no longer in focus, we are in a recession. It’s about us, but it’s also about the venture capital ecosystem. At the moment it is completely dead, there are no takers in the later phase Cake is in,” Cake’s CEO and founder told the newspaper on Thursday.
He also points to another aggravating circumstance: that the company has as many as six different types of shares that give some owners greater rights than others. This is a phenomenon Breakit has recently written about, and which makes it complicated for a new owner to enter companies that are under financial pressure.
Cake’s CEO also says that the company had secured half of the 80 million the company wanted to get for the current brewing foundation.
“Then our anchor investors – without pointing to any individual – would make sure to assist with the rest. As recently as yesterday, I thought we were at the finish line. But at the last moment, specific committed actors have chosen to drop out,” says Stefan Ytterborn to Di.
Cake has around 140 employees and, in addition to Stockholm, has a presence in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Milan.
Cake had a turnover of SEK 99 million in 2022. The operating profit amounted to -263 million during the same period. Cash flow from current operations was SEK -369 million.
The company, which was founded in 2015, has sold approximately 6,000 vehicles until the bankruptcy.
