The Chinese car mogul Li Shufu (58) has the IPO of the British sports car subsidiary Lotus checked. The company could go public within the next two years to raise capital for the planned expansion, said Lotus boss Matt Windle (50) the “Financial Times”. The talks are still at an early stage.
The traditional British brand has been part of the Geely Group since 2017. Billionaire Li Shufu, who is also one of Mercedes-Benz’s largest shareholders, acquired the majority of the company in 2017. At that time, Geely had secured access to the Malaysian car manufacturer Proton in order to attack the Southeast Asian market with its bread-and-butter models – Lotus was there on top of it.
In the meantime, however, Li Shufu is pursuing an aggressive growth strategy with the sports car manufacturer. The company was split in two last year. Sports cars continue to be manufactured in British Norfolk; In Wuhan, China, Lotus founded a new luxury lifestyle company that is to produce electric off-road vehicles and SUVs in the future and in which the Chinese carmaker Nio has also taken a stake. The stock market plans refer to this luxury branch.
The capital is intended to help Lotus increase car sales by a factor of 60 in just six years. According to Windle, who has been head of the sports car division and top Lotus manager since last year, 100,000 vehicles are to be sold worldwide by 2028. For comparison: Lotus sold in 2021 worldwide 1710 cars, the best result since 2011.
The considerations fit into the overall strategy of Geely patron Li Shufu. Last year he already had with some difficulties his Swedish subsidiary Volvo maneuvered to the stock exchange. An IPO for the joint electrical brand Polestar is also planned for the first half of 2022, with a target valuation of $20 billion. With Lotus, another subsidiary could subsequently be placed on the capital market as an independent company.
Since getting on board, Geely has invested more than £3 billion in the company, both to convert the drive to electric and to reach segments beyond the pure sports car niche. The role model is Porsche, which succeeded in transferring the image of their sports car to the SUV segment. The first Lotus SUV should be available in 2022 or early 2023 China go into production. The car is said to have already been demonstrated at an event in front of investors in London, where the capital market plans were tested last week.
In addition to the SUVs, Lotus further on supercars. The Emira is the last sports car with a combustion engine; the Evija is already operated electrically. According to the plans, around 10 percent of sales are to be accounted for by sports cars by 2028; the vehicles manufactured in China should account for 90 percent.