Lotus has completed the filing of the US stock market listing, intending to broaden financing channels and accelerate the electric transformation.
The website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission recently released a notice of filing for Lotus Technology Inc.'s overseas issuance and listing. Lotus Technologies will merge with overseas special purpose acquisition company L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp to list on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in the United States, issuing no more than 181 million shares of common stock. According to the documents submitted by Lotus in October last year, the company's IPO valuation is expected to reach $5.4 billion. It was once reported that Lotus initially planned to go public by the end of 2023, but the plan was postponed due to unknown reasons. "There is no specific reason for the delay in listing, and we believe the situation is good," commented Mike Johnstone, Chief Business Officer of Lotus.
Lotus is a world-renowned manufacturer of sports cars and racing cars. As an established luxury sports car company, Lotus is on par with Ferrari and Porsche. Nonetheless, in terms of sales and brand awareness, Lotus lags far behind the other two brands. After being acquired by Geely in 2017, Lotus began to gather new momentum. At that time, Geely Automobile invested £ 1.5 billion ($1.63 billion) in the hope of leveraging the opportunity of electrification transformation and build the brand into a competitor to Porsche. One year later, Lotus released the "Vision80" ten-year brand revival plan, announcing a comprehensive transformation towards electrification and intelligence. In October 2022, Lotus's first pure electric intelligent Hyper SUV, Eletre, was officially launched. According to the plan, Lotus will launch a new mid size SUV model this year to benchmark against the Porsche Macan pure electric version. The new car will be launched in 2026 and is expected to achieve annual sales of 80000 to 90000 units by 2027.
Regarding the strategic positioning of the company, Mike Johnstone, Chief Business Officer of Lotus, believes that negative emotions surrounding specific electric vehicle companies will not continue. "Driven by consumers and regulatory agencies, electric vehicles will become the trend," he said.
Accelerating the transformation towards electrification and intelligence requires a significant amount of capital investment, which is almost a universal consensus in the industry. Geely has taken frequent actions in recent years. Up to now, multiple sub brands such as Volvo, Jixing, and ECARX have independently gone public, forming a fortress for Geely's large-scale development in the high-end new energy vehicle market. The landing of Lotus in the capital market undoubtedly provides the company with more financing channels and creates more business opportunities. As Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely Holding Group, previously stated in an internal speech, "In the end, only large-scale enterprises can survive."