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Volvo has once again embarked on the road of IPO.
Recently, Volvo announced in its official website that it plans to raise 25 billion Swedish kronor (about 18.4 billion yuan) in an IPO on the Nasdaq Stockholm Stock Exchange. It is expected to complete the listing and start trading this year.
Volvo announced the impact of IPO, from Volvo official website.
This is not the first time Volvo has rushed to the market.
As early as 2016, Volvo began to make an impact on IPO, which was recognized by three Swedish investment institutions, but it did not go public smoothly in the end. At that time, the industry speculated that its parent company Geely did not want to let go; Two years later, Volvo sought IPO listing again, but it was once again opposed by Geely because the valuation given by the relevant investment institutions was too low.
Now, Volvo, which has experienced the previous two unsuccessful IPOs, still hasn’t given up listing and started to attack the IPO again, and behind this insistence, it is actually considered for its own development.
Since Volvo was acquired by Geely in August 2010, with the blessing of the latter channel, it has achieved an increase in sales volume and profitability, but compared with the luxury brands of the same level in BBA, Volvo’s domestic development does not have much advantage.
This disadvantage has been further amplified with the rapid development of the new energy automobile industry, because in the industry’s view, although Volvo has made some moves in the new energy automobile business, it is difficult to occupy a seat on such a highly competitive track as a whole.
For Geely, life is also not easy.
Geely, as one of China’s independent automobile brands, started early after smelling the development trend of new energy vehicles, and chose a multi-brand parallel development style. However, due to factors such as internal friction among brands and insufficient brand power, the new energy vehicle business has been tepid.
Affected by this, Geely Automobile began to fall into the unfavorable situation of high debts. Geely also tried to alleviate this dilemma by merging Volvo and listing in science and technology innovation board independently, but all ended in failure. As a last resort, Geely had to pin its hopes on Volvo’s listing.
After the acquisition ten years ago, Geely and Volvo supported each other, and now both of them are in a development dilemma, which can be described as the "ten-year itch" stage. So, will Volvo succeed in this sprint listing? After listing, can it become an antidote to its development?
1, the twists and turns of the IPO road
Volvo’s IPO, in fact, has long been rumored.
On May 13th this year, Geely Holding Group and Volvo Group successively announced that Volvo’s board of directors decided to start evaluating the possibility of Volvo’s IPO.
A month later, Hanken samuelson, CEO of Volvo, once again said that Volvo’s listing process is progressing smoothly, and an IPO may be held at the end of this year. According to the plan, Volvo will be listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm Stock Exchange.
In addition to the announcement of IPO, some substantive actions are also being carried out at the same time.
In late July, Volvo signed an agreement with its parent company Geely Holding Group to acquire all the shares of Geely Holding in its joint venture in China.
It is understood that Volvo and Geely have two joint ventures in China, namely, Daqing Volvo Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Volvo Automobile R&D Co., Ltd., both of which are held by Geely Holding and Volvo respectively.
Information on equity penetration of Daqing Volvo and Shanghai Volvo, screenshot from Tianyanchang.
According to the agreement, Volvo will fully integrate its manufacturing, R&D and sales business in China after the acquisition. After the complete acquisition, Volvo’s equity will increase, and its share of net profit will also increase.
In the industry’s view, this move is for Volvo to make itself more attractive for investment, so as to pave the way for its subsequent IPO. After all, Volvo’s previous IPO road can be described as twists and turns.
As early as 2016, Volvo conducted a market evaluation of IPO and was recognized by Swedish investment. Through three Swedish institutional investors, it issued convertible preferred shares and obtained 5 billion Swedish kronor (with a contract of 3.73 billion RMB).
Then the Financial Times reported that Volvo planned to raise $500 million from investors in China to prepare for its future listing. At that time, samuelson, CEO of Volvo, did not explicitly deny these news, and said that IPO was an option, but regarding the listing plan, it would be decided by Geely Holding, the parent company.
Just as everyone was waiting for news of Volvo’s further listing, there was no substantive news. At that time, for the reason why Volvo’s IPO came to an abrupt end, the industry speculated that it was because the parent company Geely refused to let go, because it was the sixth year of Geely’s acquisition of Volvo, and Volvo was also an important endorsement of Geely.
Volvo, which experienced its first failure, did not give up its IPO.
In August 2018, according to the Financial Times, Volvo has hired Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to do listing counseling for it, and the valuation was set at 16-30 billion US dollars that year, and it is planned to set Stockholm as the preferred place for IPO, and then it will consider a second listing in Hong Kong.
In terms of fundraising, according to relevant media reports, Volvo was prepared to raise about 4.5 billion US dollars with 15% shares.
However, at that time, the relevant investment institutions only made a valuation of $12-18 billion for Volvo, which was far from the target valuation expected by Geely, the parent company, so Volvo’s listing plan was put on hold again.
In February last year, Geely Automobile announced that it was planning to restructure its business with Volvo. According to the plan, Volvo’s assets after the reorganization will be included in Geely Automobile’s Hong Kong listed company, and it will consider listing in Stockholm in the future.
Volvo and Geely pre-merger part of the announcement, screenshot from the announcement.
This means that Volvo will be packaged and listed together with Geely Automobile, but just four months later, the variables appear again. At that time, Geely Automobile announced that it planned to go public in science and technology innovation board with the approval of the company’s board of directors.
With the "solo flight" of Geely Automobile, its merger negotiation with Volvo has also undergone some changes. In February of this year, Geely Automobile announced that it had reached the "best" plan for the merger and reorganization with Volvo.
According to the new plan, the two parties will carry out a series of business mergers and cooperation on the basis of maintaining their existing independent company structures, including the merger of powertrain business and related technical cooperation such as electrification, intelligent network connection and automatic driving.
As a result, Volvo has become a single party, and its listing plan has once again run aground.
Unexpectedly, a few months later, Volvo embarked on the IPO road for the fourth time. Different from previous times, Volvo attaches great importance to IPO this time. "Today’s announcement that Volvo intends to list on Nasdaq in Stockholm is an important milestone for the company." Hanken samuelson, CEO of Volvo, told the media.
Hanken samuelson also said, "This IPO marks a new chapter for Volvo, and we invite Swedish and international investors to participate in our future growth and value creation. The IPO will help to strengthen our brand and accelerate our transformation strategy-to achieve full electrification, create a user-direct mode and achieve a higher level of security. "
Geely also expressed support for Volvo’s IPO again. "The global automobile industry is undergoing unprecedented changes, and we are determined to support the transformation and development of Volvo, a legendary Swedish brand." Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Group, said this.
Behind Volvo’s demanding transformation and Geely’s strong support, it is actually the dilemma that both sides have highlighted.
2. Volvo and Geely’s "Ten-year itch"
The value and strength of Geely and Volvo today are in sharp contrast with those of ten years ago.
At that time, Geely Automobile was still a small player in the domestic market. According to public data, its near profit in 2009 was only 1.182 billion yuan. In contrast, the net profit of Geely Automobile in 2020 was 5.534 billion yuan, almost four times that of 2009.
Volvo lived a more miserable life at that time. According to the data of Volvo’s public financial report, its pre-tax loss was as high as $1.5 billion in 2008, and it still owed its parent company Ford $3.5 billion, which once became a "burden" in Ford’s product system.
Although it has fallen into a downturn, Volvo is an old car company after all, and its market value at that time remained at around 13.6 billion yuan. Geely’s market value at that time was only over 3 billion yuan.
Under such a big gap, Geely made a seemingly crazy decision to acquire 100% shares of Volvo and related assets for $1.8 billion. As a result, at that time, the media called this seemingly gambling acquisition "snake swallowing elephant".
Tuyuan Geely Automobile official website
Facts have proved that Li Shufu won the gambling with "small and broad". After Geely acquired Volvo, it took the latter’s technology and experience into the bag, and embarked on the "fast lane" of development.
In 2013, Geely and Volvo established a joint research and development center (CEVT) in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Geely started the pace of overseas expansion. After that, Geely successfully hatched Geely Borui based on KC platform extended from Volvo GMC platform, which is the first model that Geely introduced Volvo safety technology concept.
Since its listing in April 2015, Borui has reached the sales volume of more than 2,000 vehicles in the following month, and in January of the following year, the sales volume of this car continued to rise to the sales volume of more than 6,000 vehicles, making it one of the better models of domestic medium-sized cars at that time.
With such success, Geely also began to have the idea of high-end layout.
In 2017, Geely once again set up a technology joint venture company with Volvo, and jointly developed the CMA architecture of the first mid-level car basic module architecture. Based on this framework, a brand-new car brand "Linke" came into being.
Lingke was positioned as a high-end fuel vehicle at the beginning of its birth. With the subsequent launch of Lingke 01 and Lingke 03, its sales volume has been good, and the cumulative sales volume has exceeded 500,000. So that this brand has become a "sharp weapon" for Geely to impact high-end.
"Volvo’s technology has allowed Geely to build a car into the door." Li Shufu once sighed like this.
As the acquired party, Volvo, with the blessing of Geely, has also made significant growth and explored the domestic market soon.
In 2013, Volvo successively built Chengdu factory, Daqing factory and Zhangjiakou engine factory in China. The landing of these factories gave Volvo an opportunity to explore the local market in China.
The following year, the basic research and development of a new SPA platform (extensible vehicle platform architecture) jointly invested by Volvo and Geely was completed. This platform has greatly revitalized Volvo, and Volvo S90 and XC60 developed based on this platform have been well received by the market.
Volvo S90, source of Volvo Guanwei
In this way, since Geely acquired Volvo in 2010, thanks to the convenience that Geely Automobile brought to Volvo in terms of channels and production capacity, Volvo’s sales in China and around the world have also increased year after year.
In 2017, Volvo’s global sales reached 571,600 vehicles, and its operating profit reached a record of 14.1 billion Swedish kronor, up 27.7% year-on-year. Compared with the operating profit of 2.34 billion Swedish kronor when it was acquired in 2010, it has increased more than six times.
While Borui, Link and other fuel vehicles are successful, Geely’s ambition in the field of new energy vehicles is also growing.
Since 2015, Geely has released the "Blue Geely Plan" in a high-profile manner. After taking the lead in the transformation to electrification, it has successively launched three new energy brands, namely Emgrand, Geometry and Maple Leaf, in the following years. However, due to the fact that the models released later belong to the "oil to electricity" change, they all performed poorly after the launch.
After that, Geely did not give up the new energy field, and found Volvo to jointly develop the new energy brand "Polar Star" and launch polar star 1 and polar star 2 models. Although it was expected for a while, it was too similar to the geometric brand in positioning, and the pricing was too high, so it did not form competitiveness in the market.
Because of this, Geely’s entire new energy vehicle business is silent in the domestic new energy market and has fallen into a dilemma.
According to the data of the Federation, in the Top 10 ranking of domestic new energy vehicle sales in 2020, none of Geely’s models were on the list. In contrast, Chery Automobile, both traditional car companies, and BYD’s new energy vehicles were on the list.
On the other hand, Volvo has been helping Geely to launch new energy brands and models, but its own new energy business has not been done. The XC40 RECHARGE, the first pure electric vehicle, was not officially listed at the Guangzhou Auto Show until November 2020, which was visibly slow.
For Geely, although it has been exploring in the field of new energy vehicles, it has not made any achievements in high-end aspects. Until March of this year, Geely Automobile announced that it had jointly launched the "Extreme Krypton" brand positioned in high-end new energy with Geely Holding Group.
Figure source pole krypton official micro
However, just after the release of the brand, the release and opening of its first model, Krypton 001, it was complained and defended by many consumers, which was a bad start. Connected travel has elaborated on this situation in the article "Being extremely defended, unable to support Geely’s high-end dream of new energy".
It is precisely because of the decline of the new energy vehicle business that the profit performance of Geely Automobile is also affected. In 2020, Geely Automobile achieved revenue of 92.374 billion yuan, down 5.46% year-on-year; The net profit was 5.534 billion yuan, down 32.43% year-on-year. In the first half of this year, although the net profit has turned positive year-on-year, the growth rate is only 3.67%.
In addition to poor profitability, Geely is also facing the dilemma of debt. According to Wind data, the total debt of Geely Automobile in 2020 was 46.6 billion yuan, and by the first half of this year, the total debt had reached 43.2 billion yuan. It is foreseeable that its debt may exceed that of last year by the end of this year.
Looking at it now, although Geely acquired Volvo ten years ago, the two sides experienced the same support and common development for a long time, but because of the unsatisfactory development in the field of new energy vehicles, Geely and Volvo have both fallen into their own difficulties, which can be described as entering the "ten-year itch".
Under this situation, Geely, which rushed to science and technology innovation board without any results, and Volvo, which suffered from twists and turns in listing, pinned their hopes on this IPO of Volvo.
3. Can Volvo rush to IPO again become an antidote for both parties?
To discuss this issue, there is actually a prerequisite-Volvo can successfully go public this time.
Based on the previous twists and turns of Volvo’s listing experience, especially one of its failures was terminated because the parent company was dissatisfied with the valuation of Volvo given by the market, the industry is skeptical about whether Volvo can successfully go public.
"The valuation figure has always been a sensitive tipping point for the stakeholders of this transaction." L.M.Feng, a financial scholar at the University of Illinois, said this in an interview with Interface News.
Volvo did not disclose the valuation of the listing after the official announcement of the listing plan, but according to the estimated value given by foreign media, Volvo’s valuation is about 20 billion to 25 billion US dollars, which is about one-third of the market value of European luxury car manufacturers Daimler and BMW Group.
However, it may be difficult for Geely to be satisfied with this valuation. The Financial Times once quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that according to Li Shufu’s idea, only when Volvo’s valuation exceeds $30 billion, or even reaches $40 billion, will it support its IPO.
From this point of view, whether Volvo can successfully go public this time is still unknown.
However, it should be noted that even if Volvo can successfully go public this time, it will be difficult for it or its parent company Geely to get out of the predicament.
First look at Volvo itself. According to its previously released performance data for the first half of 2021, its operating income in the first half of the year reached 141.1 billion Swedish kronor (about 103.482 billion yuan), up 26.3% compared with the same period in 2020; Earnings before interest and tax was SEK 13.24 billion (about RMB 9.878 billion), compared with a loss of SEK 989 million in the same period last year.
Although revenue and profits have achieved a good picture of both growth, it does not mean that Volvo does not need funds. After all, Volvo, which is a few steps behind in the new energy vehicle business, has made a relatively radical plan.
According to Volvo’s plan, it is expected to realize full electrification in 2025, in which the proportion of pure electric vehicles will reach 50%. In 2030, it will become a pure electric luxury car enterprise, catching up with mainstream luxury car brands such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz in terms of profit margin.
At the same time, Volvo will adjust its existing sales model and promote the online direct sales model today, when the direct sales model has become widely used by new energy vehicle companies. "Promoting the direct sales model will also enable the company to achieve sustained growth in sales, revenue and profitability." Hanken samuelson once said this.
"For Volvo, RMB 18.4 billion may not be enough, because its new energy vehicle business is still in its infancy in a strict sense, and the sales volume of XC40 RECHARGE is not good after listing. Volvo needs to make great efforts in research and development, technology and channels to achieve its own goals, and these aspects all need money." Sun Hao, head of R&D of a domestic head-end new energy vehicle company, told wired travel.
Volvo XC40 RECHARGE, from Volvo Guanwei
Volvo wants to achieve its goals. Apart from capital, competition in the industry is an aspect that it should carefully examine.
The first thing to face is the BBA, which is also a luxury brand and has also shouted their own electrification goals. According to previous foreign media reports, according to BMW’s plan, in 2023, BMW plans to expand new energy vehicle products to 25 models, half of which are pure electric vehicles; In 2025, it is planned to invest more than 30 billion euros in research and development such as hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Mercedes-Benz also put forward its own goal, and plans to launch 10 pure electric vehicles in 2022, and expects to increase the sales of pure electric vehicles to 15% to 25% of the total sales in 2025. By 2030, it is planned that electric vehicles (including pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles) will account for 50% of the sales of new passenger cars.
In addition to BMW and Mercedes-Benz, Audi is not far behind. According to its plan, the total investment in the next five years will be about 35 billion euros (US$ 42.35 billion), half of which will be used for investment in automobile projects and innovative automobile technologies. Specifically, about 10 billion euros ($12.1 billion) will be used for electric vehicles, and 5 billion euros ($6.05 billion) will be used for hybrid power.
It can be seen that the plan proposed by BBA is similar to Volvo’s goal, and they are all ready to accelerate electrification by 2025, which means that Volvo will be hard and hard with BBA after that. With Xiaomi, Jidu, Zhiji and other big manufacturers entering the market to build cars, Volvo is bound to encounter their challenges in the future.
"Volvo’s financing can improve Volvo’s own capital situation to a certain extent to support the development of investment, but to better solve the challenges such as product competition, shareholders need to make more other efforts to obtain more capital resources, so as not to fall behind in the new global competition." Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Oliver Wyman Consulting, said this to connected travel.
Compared with Volvo, its parent company Geely is in urgent need of financing to improve its debt situation.
In November last year, the Standard & Poor’s Index downgraded the long-term issuer credit ratings of Zhejiang Geely Holding and Geely Automobile and the issuance rating of senior unsecured bills to "BBB-", and removed all ratings from the watch list, and the rating outlook remained "negative".
In its latest report in June this year, Standard & Poor’s insisted on its previous view, and said that Zhejiang Geely Holding will continue to face leverage pressure in the next 12-24 months due to high capital expenditure, potential economic fluctuations and the uncertainty of its subsidiary Geely Automobile landing in science and technology innovation board.
In order to solve this dilemma, Geely has done a lot of Plan B while supporting Volvo’s independent listing, including promoting the listing of its electric vehicle brands Polar Star and Extreme Krypton.
At the end of September this year, Polestar, an electric car brand owned by Volvo, officially announced the news of IPO. Like FF, Polestar will land in the US stock market by backdoor, and its market valuation will reach 20 billion US dollars.
At the end of August earlier, Krypton Automobile, which was jointly invested by Geely Automobile and Geely Holding, announced the completion of the $500 million Pre-A round of financing. "After extremely financing, it will be listed on the A-share market or science and technology innovation board in the future, and it will get better results." Some Geely insiders told the interface news.
Extreme krypton financing information, screenshot from Tianyan check.
According to another media report, Geely Holding is also considering an IPO for Lotus or its electric vehicle business as early as 2022. If it goes public, the valuation of the whole business may exceed 15 billion US dollars.
Geely needs to clarify the development route and positioning of its multi-brand business if it wants to truly get out of trouble, because the internal friction between brands has hindered the development of various brands. Wired Insight made its debut in Geely Automobile science and technology innovation board. Can it become "China Volkswagen"? In many reports, such as "",the internal friction of Geely brand has been elaborated in detail.
"In the field of new energy vehicles, Geely has tried various directions and its technical route is comprehensive. However, this comprehensive and rapid iterative method is more suitable for Internet enterprises. If traditional enterprises cannot achieve commercialization in a short period of time after using this method, the overall waste of internal resources will be more obvious. " Wang Xianbin of the Geshi Automobile Research Institute said this about connected travel.
In Zhang Junyi’s view, with Geely promoting the listing of Volvo, Polar Star, Polar Krypton and other brands, it may be possible for Geely to further clarify the problems of its business development and provide favorable help for better transformation and development into a technology and user company.
Now, even if Volvo can successfully go public this time, it may not be able to solve its own and Geely’s respective difficulties on its own. Although Volvo and Geely have been closely linked after more than ten years, how to spend the "ten-year itch" is still the biggest problem that both sides need to consider.
(At the request of the interviewee, Sun Hao is a pseudonym in this article. )
