Renault’s decision to cancel the stock market listing of its Ampere division is the latest in a series of postponements, cancellations or – for those that did float – mistimed listings for EV-angled businesses.
Lotus missed its deadline last year to list its electric arm in the US via the SPAC method and now says it will try for the first quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, the planned US listing of fellow Geely brand Zeekr has been similarly postponed amid disagreements about its valuation and the turmoil in global financial markets, sources told Reuters in November.
And in Germany, the Volkswagen Group has gone cool on plans to list its PowerCo battery business, Bloomberg reported this week, quoting unnamed sources.
Renault cited “current equity market conditions” for cancelling its plan to list Ampere, although CEO Luca de Meo also referenced the current black cloud over EV in general.
“The context isn't the ideal. On the EV market today, the conversation is going in the wrong direction,” he told journalists and investors on Tuesday.
Analysts welcomed Renault’s decision, citing the poor stock market performance of other EV companies.
“Current pure EV valuations made an IPO unattractive,” Philippe Houchois, an analyst at the bank Jefferies, said in a note, adding that we’re currently “at a low point in negative EV sentiment”.
It's certainly pretty grim out there for those EV angled companies that have listed. Even Tesla, the world’s most valuable car company as calculated by share price, is well down from its $1 trillion peak to $619 billion now.
Others are faring much worse after riding the initial wave of enthusiasm for EV start-ups fed by low-interest investment cash and excitement whipped up by smaller shareholders hoping for a similar wild ride to stock riches as that experienced by early Tesla investors.
Polestar, for example, now has a market capitalisation of $4.9bn, down from $21bn after floating in 2022.
Its fall has been so fast that the bank Bernstein recommended in January that majority owners Volvo and Geely should take it private again, describing it it as “on a road to nowhere” in terms of its journey as a standalone stock. Swedish bank SEB said recently it judged the shares to be now worthless.
Polestar delivered 54,600 cars last year, up 6% on 2022 but below its predictions, and it said last week that it would cut around 450 jobs globally as it faced “challenging market conditions”.
It's one of a slew of standalone EV makers inspired by Tesla’s success that listed, initially soared in valuation and sunk.
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