On Jan 12th, WM Motor, a new energy vehicle startup whose deliveries fell last year, is finally nearing its goal of going public in Hong Kong through a unit’s reverse merger with the listed arm of Apollo Future Mobility Group.
Apollo Future Mobility (Chinese: Apollo智慧出行集团), a Hong Kong-listed company, announced on January 12 that it would acquire a subsidiary of Chinese automaker WM Motor (Chinese: 威马汽车) for USD 2.02 billion. After this move, WM Motor will hold 31.1 billion of Apollo’s shares, accounting for 68.26% overall. This is a strong indication of WM Motor’s plan to carry out a public listing through a reverse takeover.
According to relevant personnel's information, the follow-up process is mainly for Apollo to do its best to carry out due diligence. Considering that WM Motor submitted its A1 prospectus on May 31, 2022 and replied to several rounds of questions from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx), the due diligence is expected to be completed within two to three months. Optimistically, WM Motor has a great chance of completing a listing in the second quarter of this year.
WM Motor recently received three rounds of funding, including HKD 250 million (USD 32 million) from a well-known commercial bank, CNY 500 million (USD 74 million) from Amer International Group (Chinese: 正威国际), a Fortune 500 company, and HKD 1.5 billion (USD 192 million) from Agile Group (Chinese: 雅居乐集团). The newly obtained financing will help alleviate the shortage problem of WM Motor's capital chain.
Apollo is engaged in batteries, 3D printing, design, and other businesses, while WM Motor’s advantages include production qualification, production capacity, intelligent platform, channels, brands and so on. After the backdoor listing is completed, WM Motor and Apollo Future will jointly develop and mass-produce the smart sports sedan X@A, which will be priced at more than USD 100,000.