Polestar: On the stock market with luxury electric cars

Polestar, the Volvo-affiliated electric car brand, has big plans. In a few years, the company wants to build hundreds of thousands of vehicles. She gets money for this through a US IPO through the back door.

Polestar was founded in 2017 by the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo and its Chinese owner Geely. Last year, the luxury electric brand delivered 10,000 vehicles. By 2025 the number should be 290,000 annually. The business is to be expanded from currently 14 countries to 30 markets worldwide by 2023.

Valued at nearly $ 20 billion

This is one of the reasons why the young car company now wants to get through the back door to New York’s Nasdaq. Instead of an expensive and lengthy regular IPO, Polestar is to merge with a so-called SPAC – an empty corporate shell that is already listed. In the case of Polestar, this is the investment firm Gores Guggenheim of US billionaire Alex Gores.

Should all current shareholders participate, the future Polestar Automotive Holding could flow more than a billion dollars in this way. Polestar is valued at approximately $ 20 billion in the deal, including debt. The merger has yet to be approved.

German designer is the head of the company

The head of Polestar is the German car designer Thomas Ingenlath. The way to the stock exchange via a SPAC deal instead of a classic share placement is faster and gives the company more flexibility, he says.

This year Ingenlath had set the goal of producing the cars at Polestar as sustainably as possible and largely using recycled products. The manager was a long car designer at the Volkswagen Group and later at Volvo, before taking over the post of chief at Polestar in 2017.