Chinese electric car maker XPeng, whose investors include internet heavyweight Alibaba Group and smartphone supplier of Beijing Xiaomi, submitted to go into the United States on Friday.
The move comes after the June 30 Nasdaq listing of Li Auto, which raised $ 1.1 billion and whose shares have increased. They closed 8.7% Friday at $ 16.89, but are still well above their $ 11.50 IPO price.
XPeng intends to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol XPEV. The submission said it seeks to raise $ 100 million, but that amount could be increased later. The offer offer also follows US share gains by Tesla and China-based Nio, another EV maker.
XPeng, headquartered in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, is 31% controlled by CEO He Xiaopeng, and 14% owned by Alibaba. Among its well-known investors, XPeng owns 6% of funds linked to IDG, 4% through Morningside-related funds, and 3.8% through GGV funds. Smartphone maker Xiaomi has a stake, and in July, XPeng raised $ 900 million from a group of investors including Aspex, Coatue, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital China, the Qatar Investment Authority, and Mubadala, a Sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi.
In the first six months of this year, XPeng’s revenue of $ 141 million was not far from its loss of $ 112 million. However, XPeng says it has reached several milestones in 2020, despite the effects of Covid-19, including the launch of its second Smart EV model, the P7 sports sedan – in April, and obtaining a production license for its self-built, full own factory in May in Guangdong.
XPeng is targeting the world-leading China car market, where car sales in 2019 totaled 21.1 million units, according to IHS Markit Report figures cited in Xpeng’s submission. The penetration rate of EVs in the passenger car market was 4.2%, or about 893,700 units, in 2019, and is set to grow by 29.4% annually in 2019-2025 to reach 4.2 million units , which represents 16.2% of China’s passenger car market, according to the IHS Markit Report.
Technology features for cars are one of the most important factors for Chinese consumers when making decisions about buying cars, the prospectus says. This fits in with the technological roots of XPeng and aims to sell autonomous driving cars. In addition, the Chinese government has announced a plan to achieve a 30% penetration rate for smart and connected cars between total car sales by 2025, it said.
He, who has a fortune of $ 1.2 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, was previously co-founder of the browser UCWeb, which was fully acquired by Alibaba in 2014, as well as an Alibaba -executing. Other co-founders of XPeng, Xia Heng and He Tao, were former operators of Guangzhou Automobile Group, a large government-controlled automaker.
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