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 combined company at a pro-forma equity value of $24 billion. Lucid, run by an ex-Tesla engineer, is the latest firm to tap the initial public offering market, with investors rushing into the EV sector, spurred by the rise of Tesla Inc and with emissions regulations toughening in Europe and elsewhere.
The deal, which has a transaction equity value of $11.75 billion, includes a $2.1 billion cash contribution from CCIV and a PIPE (private investment in public equity) investment of 2.5 billion from investors. Other prominent players in the sector went public through mergers with so-called special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) last year. While some deals such as Fisker have delivered well, others such as Nikola have given up short-term gains.
The publicly traded shares of CCIV fell nearly a third to $40.35 in volatile extended trading, giving the merged company a market capitalization of about $64 billion. By comparison, General Motors Co is worth about $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 said it planned to start its deliveries in spring of 2021.
Source: Reuters
By Reporting by Niket Nishant, Shariq Khan and Sohini Podder in Bengaluru and Greg Roumeliotis in New York
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