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(Reuters) – Luxury electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors on Monday agreed to go public by merging with blank check firm Churchill Capital IV Corp in a deal that valued the merged company at $ 11.75 billion. dollars.
Lucid, led by a former Tesla engineer, is the latest company to tap the initial public offering market, as investors rush into the electric vehicle sector, spurred on by the rise of Tesla Inc and the tightening of markets. emission regulations in Europe and elsewhere.
Last year, other major players in the industry went public through mergers with Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). While some trades such as Fisker have worked well, others such as Nikola have given up on short-term gains.
CCIV’s publicly traded shares fell nearly a third to $ 40.35 in volatile extended trading, giving the merged company a market cap of around $ 64 billion. By comparison, General Motors Co is worth around $ 76 billion.
Lucid said it is on track to start production and deliveries in North America in the second half of this year with Lucid Air, its first luxury sedan. It had previously announced that it planned to begin deliveries in the spring of 2021.
Lucid, which plans to build vehicles at its Arizona plant, aims to deliver 20,000 vehicles in 2022 and 251,000 in 2026 by adding other models such as an electric sport utility vehicle.
With a starting price of $ 77,400, the sedan is expected to be the first to achieve a range of 500 miles (805 km).
After Lucid fixed the price for his sedan, Tesla chief Elon Musk announced a price reduction for his flagship Model S sedan. “The glove has been thrown away!” he tweeted.
CCIV, which is backed by Wall Street trader and former Citigroup banker Michael Klein, and new private investors get shares at different prices, with new private investors paying a premium.
The deal with CCIV includes a $ 2.5 billion private investment from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, funds managed by BlackRock and others.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant, Shariq Khan and Sohini Podder in Bengaluru and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco; Writing by Subrat Patnaik; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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