(Reuters) – Luxury electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors agreed on Monday to go public by merging with the blank check firm Churchill Capital IV Corp in a deal that valued the combined company at $ 11.75 billion.
Lucid, led by a former Tesla engineer, is the latest company to hit the IPO market, with investors rushing to the EV sector, spurred on by the rise of Tesla Inc and the tightening of emissions regulations in Europe and elsewhere.
Other prominent players in the sector went public through mergers with so-called special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) last year. While some businesses like Fisker have done well, others, like Nikola, have given up on short-term gains.
CCIV’s publicly traded shares fell by almost a third to $ 40.35 in volatile prolonged trading, giving the resulting company a market capitalization of around $ 64 billion. In 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. She had previously said that she planned to start her deliveries in the spring of 2021.
Lucid, which plans to build vehicles at its Arizona plant, plans to deliver 20,000 vehicles in 2022 and 251,000 in 2026, adding other models, such as an electric sport utility vehicle.
With a starting price of $ 77,400, the sedan is scheduled to be the first to achieve a range of 500 miles (805 km).
After Lucid priced his sedan, Tesla boss Elon Musk announced a cut in the price of his S sedan model car. “The glove has been released!” he tweeted.
CCIV, which is supported by Wall Street negotiator and former Citigroup banker Michael Klein, and new private investors are receiving 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 Arabian 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)