The Swedish IPO valued at $ 20 billion confirms the surge of electric manufacturers like champion Tesla.
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Barely 10,000 cars sold last year, and a market value higher than that of Renault: the Swedish Polestar, which announced Monday its future IPO for a spectacular amount of 20 billion dollars (18.5 billion dollars). francs), confirms the surge of electric manufacturers such as champion Tesla.
The owners of Polestar, the Swedish Volvo Cars and the Chinese Geely, will soon list it on the New York Stock Exchange, announced the Swedish brand.
This small European competitor of Tesla, which also counts the actor Leonardo di Caprio among its shareholders, has marketed only two models since its creation in 2017, and in 2020 only sold 10,000 of its luxury vehicles, manufactured in China.
This considerable valuation would place the brand just behind a giant like Nissan, and ahead of Renault, Tata Motors or Subaru.
The stock market ranking of car manufacturers is dominated by Tesla, with a valuation of more than 767 billion dollars, far ahead of Toyota and Volkswagen, yet the world’s leading manufacturers in terms of number of vehicles.
The American start-up Lucid Motors and the Chinese NIO or Xpeng are also at the top of the ranking, neck and neck with their ancestors Ford, Ferrari or Hyundai.
But the road is strewn with pitfalls for some of these new manufacturers: Chinese automaker Li Auto, which raised $ 1.1 billion when it was listed on the Nasdaq in 2020, saw its shares collapse when it was listed. on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August 2021, against the backdrop of Beijing’s regulatory backlash against tech.
In the United States, electric pickup maker Lordstown Motors announced in June that it did not have enough money to produce a vehicle on a commercial scale. Its chief executive resigned days later, after a report came out acknowledging the company had made inaccurate statements about some pre-orders.
“It is really more difficult for a small business to succeed” in the automotive sector “because the fixed costs are very high”, notes Jessica Caldwell of the firm Edmunds.
You not only need to have a large factory, but you also need to set up a whole supply chain for the many parts of a vehicle.
A meteoric expansion
For its part, Polestar offers the “dynamism of a young company” while taking advantage of “the industrial heritage and expertise of Volvo”, underlined Monday the boss of the brand Thomas Ingenlath in front of investors.
“The revenue from the suit is to be used to fund significant investments in models and expansion of operations and markets,” Polestar said in a statement. The brand plans to make a profit from 2023.
Polestar, Volvo Cars’ former sports label, became a brand in its own right in 2017. It aims for nearly 290,000 sales per year in 2025 and expects to be present in 30 countries by 2023, its leaders said.
To achieve this, Polestar plans to launch one car per year: a “luxury and sporty” SUV in 2022, the Polestar 3, then the 4, a luxury sedan. It intends to rely on online sales and a few dealerships in metropolitan areas, but also on Volvo’s after-sales network.
However, the brand is not available in France, its chevron logo too much like Citroën’s.
Its valuation will be done through a merger in a dedicated company, Gores Guggenheim, controlled by two American investment funds.
The valuation of 20 billion dollars corresponds to three times the turnover targeted in 2023 and 1.5 times the expected sales in 2024, specifies the group.
The transaction is scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2022 and listing is expected on Nasdaq.
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