From The Verge: Polestar is the latest electric vehicle company to go public, listing its stock on the Nasdaq exchange Friday after successfully merging with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The company plans on using the $850 million in fresh capital to fund its three-year plan to make several new electric models and become profitable.
The Swedish company, which is a joint venture between Volvo and its parent company Geely, is going public amid broader uncertainty around EV stocks. Several EV startups have gone the SPAC route to becoming publicly traded only to see their stock price tank after early stumbles.
Polestar is slightly different, having been selling and delivering its Polestar 2 electric fastback sedan to customers in the US, Europe, and China since late 2020. The company’s next EV, the Polestar 3 SUV, will debut in October 2022 and will be manufactured in the US. And, it recently secured a deal estimated to be worth over $3 billion to sell 65,000 vehicles to Hertz.
“This is a hugely proud moment for the entire team at Polestar,” Thomas Ingenlath, CEO of Polestar, said in a statement. “We will now open a new chapter in our story that can be summarised in one word – growth.”
Polestar said it has received 32,000 orders for the Polestar 2, an increase of 290 percent over last year’s order numbers. The company aims to be selling 295,000 vehicles a year by 2025 — 10 times the amount it sold in 2021.
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