Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery, an electric vehicle (EV) battery solutions provider affiliated with Chinese publicly-listed Sunwoda Electronic, has pocketed 6 billion yuan ($875.1 million) in a Series A funding round from investors including food delivery giant Meituan.
One of the lead investors in the deal, Meituan made the bet through its strategic investment department, said investment bank Fanzhuo Capital, the financial advisor of the deal, in a statement on Thursday evening. A range of Chinese domestic investment companies co-led the deal, including Source Code Capital, Broad Vision Funds, CoStone Capital, and Shenzhen Capital Group.
The investment marks another big-cheque deal in China’s EV battery industry, which is attracting billions of US dollars as manufacturers of these eco-friendly vehicles are seeking to scale their production and diversify supply.
Sunwoda EVB in February raised 2.43 billion yuan ($354.5 million) from 19 investors led by the Nasdaq- and Hong Kong-listed EV company Li Auto, as well as state-owned automakers GAC Group and SAIC Motor. The earlier investment saw the investor group collectively acquire a 19.5% stake in the subsidiary, indicating a valuation of almost 12.5 billion yuan ($1.8 billion).
The new funding will help Sunwoda EVB, which mainly offers EV batteries and energy storage solutions, invest in new product R&D, technology upgrades, expansion of production capacity, and guaranteed deliveries.
Founded in 1997, Sunwoda started making batteries for smartphones and forayed into the EV battery sector in 2008 by developing products such as EV battery cells and battery management systems (BMS) in-house, before the official establishment of Sunwoda EVB in 2014. The lithium-ion battery maker currently operates 11 production bases in China and India with some technical and customer service centres across the US and Europe.
After about 25 years of development, Sunwoda has built a line of core businesses to provide batteries in the fields of EV, computer, communication and consumer electronics (3C), intelligent hardware, energy technology, smart manufacturing, and industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
The Shenzhen-based parent firm counts smartphone brands including Apple and Xiaomi, as well as carmakers like Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and Dongfeng Motor Group among its major customers.
Sunwoda went public on Shenzhen’s ChiNext Board in 2011. It generated revenues of over 21.7 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) in the first six months of 2022, up 38.5% from the same period last year. Its net profits attributable to shareholders in H1 2022 stood at 372 million yuan ($54.3 million), down 39.7% year-over-year.