Receive free Special purpose acquisition companies updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Special purpose acquisition companies news every morning.
A Spanish electric vehicle maker specialising in racing cars is to list in Amsterdam through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, testing investor appetite into a market that has all but collapsed.
The decade-old QEV Technologies, which is set to be valued at more than €200mn, comes to a once red-hot EV Spac market which has been hit by a series of high profile failures and frauds.
Lordstown Motors filed for bankruptcy protection in June, while Arrival and Canoo have issued “going concern” warnings that they expect to run out of funds within a year.
Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truckmaker Nikola, was convicted of defrauding investors last year and Faraday Future has faced challenges including string of financial problems under a former chief executive.
QEV, which has been building vehicles for other companies, will merge with a blank-cheque company backed by a pair of boutique financial advisories.
The business is expecting to break even within a year, said Joan Orús, QEV’s chief executive, and is forecast to make more than €60mn in revenues during 2023.
The company has acquired Nissan’s former van facility in Barcelona, where it intends to begin production of a new bespoke electric van from next year. It has access to a factory in China, where it has already begun making some vans. The business has already delivered around 100 electric vans to a Mexican business.
Orús added that a broader push in Europe to expand local manufacturing and rising sales for EVs would bolster the business as it aims to have about three-quarters of its supply chain in the region by 2025.
“We are in a completely different position, we believe, to many or most of the other EV start-ups and early stage businesses,” said John St John, chief executive of STJ Advisors, one of the advisories behind the Spac Spear Investments.
The company is also in talks to contract-manufacture vehicles for two Chinese and American car brands in the Spanish facility, in order to help maximise usage of the factory.
It already has €40mn in local and national government grants and said it will net €23mn as part of the merger. It plans to raise between €10mn and €30mn through a so-called “pipe” transaction for additional financing. Even without fresh pipe investment, QEV claims it has enough funding with the deal to last for another two years.
The financial advisory firm AZ Capital is also behind the blank-cheque vehicle, which will hold a shareholder vote on the deal in September.