The China-based electric vehicle startup NIO has hired 8 large banks to work on its coming initial public offering (IPO) of stock in the US, unnamed sources quoted by Reuters have revealed.
The unnamed sources assert that the IPO will be worth up to $2 billion, and that the banks that have been hired to work on it are: Goldman Sachs; Morgan Stanley; Credit Suisse; Citigroup; Bank of America Merrill Lynch; JPMorgan; UBS; and Deutsche Bank.
Quick note: NIO Co-founder and Executive Vice President Jack Cheng will be presenting at the rEVolution 2018 conference in Amsterdam next week, where CleanTechnica Director Zach Shahan will be co-host.
The planned IPO is reportedly intended to help the firm achieve its expansion plans — which call for the release of several “mass market” plug-in electric vehicles (now that the EP9 supercar has been released) and the development of self-driving vehicle tech. You may recall that NIO was recently granted a license in China to begin testing self-driving vehicles on public roads.
Reuters provides more: “At the top end of the potential offering size, NIO’s IPO would become the biggest Chinese listing in America since the $25 billion public float of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2014. In October 2016, Chinese logistics company ZTO Express raised $1.41 billion from an IPO in New York.
“NIO, which plans to go public in the second half of the year, declined to comment on its IPO plans. … Although China’s auto market slowed sharply in 2017, new energy vehicles have been a bright spot. An industry body said last month new EV sales would likely grow 40% this year, topping 1 million vehicles.”
In other words, NIO’s IPO plans are part of a much broader expansion of the plug-in electric vehicle sector in China. As recent sales data show, the market in China is growing much faster than anywhere else in the world — partly due to very strong government support as a result of the need to reduce local air pollution levels.
As it stands, it’s notable that one of the primary investors in NIO is Tencent Holdings — which has also made large investments in a Tesla.
For more information on NIO, see: NIO ES8 — Could This Be A Serious Competitor To The Tesla Model X?
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