$ 20 billion – is this e-car stock worth that much?
Polestar boss Thomas Ingenlath at the IAA in Munich
Quelle: Getty Images
Electric car manufacturer Polestar is aiming for the US stock exchange Nasdaq. As an established player, you stand between Lucid and Rivian, says the company boss. He considers the valuation of 20 billion dollars to be “conservatively calculated”. It depends on who you compare the company to.
Et sounds like a typical story that investors on the US technology exchange Nasdaq love: An aspiring electric car manufacturer with modernly designed products and a commitment to sustainability is bringing its shares to the market. The luxury sedan manufacturer Lucid Motors took this step in February, and Rivian, a manufacturer of electric pick-ups, is planning to take it this fall.
A European manufacturer who likes to join the ranks of electrical pioneers will soon be traded in New York: the Polestar automotive brand from Gothenburg will be listing its shares on the stock exchange with the help of American investors next year.
There is one number that is particularly noticeable about the move: The investors Gores Group and Guggenheim Capital estimate the value of the company at $ 20 billion (17 million euros). On the one hand, that sounds like a lot, given that only 10,000 Polestar cars were sold last year.
All vehicles come from China
The Renault group, with annual sales of almost three million vehicles, is only worth half as much on the stock exchange. On the other hand, the market value seems low compared to the hyped start-up Lucid, which has not yet sold a single vehicle – but is valued by investors at 40 billion dollars.
Thomas Ingenlath, the boss of Polestar, describes the assessment in an interview with WELT as “rather conservative”. “It’s not about a hype, we’re an established player,” says the manager. In fact, there are no crazy founders from Silicon Valley behind Polestar, but the automaker Volvo and its Chinese parent company Zhejiang Geely.
The US screen star Leonardo di Caprio is also still involved in the company from an early financing round. So far, two Polestar models of the brand are on the road, a third is to follow in the coming year, and two more by 2024.
All vehicles are based on the Volvo / Geely technology kit and are manufactured in China. Design and concept come from Sweden. According to Ingenlath, the targeted market value is only three times the expected profit for the year 2023 – which again would be quite cheap.
Faster to listing than SPAC
Until then, he wants to increase the number of stores in which Polestar can be bought from 14 to 30. The number of vehicles sold is expected to grow to 290,000 per year by 2025. Tesla will soon be selling that many vehicles per quarter.
A particularly large number of shares in the electric car manufacturer will not be available on the stock exchange at the beginning. Polestar is using a kind of back door to the market for the move by merging the company with a so-called Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).
Gores Guggenheim will then become Polestar Automotive, with 800 million dollars plus 250 million from the two investing companies flowing into the automobile manufacturer. The previous shareholders, mainly Volvo and Geely founder Eric Li, still hold 94 percent of the shares.
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