Lotus eyes up New York as favoured destination for IPO
Iconic British car brand Lotus is eyeing up New York as its favoured location to go public after it was revealed the car manufacturer was looking to supercharge growth with a move onto the public markets.
The Chinese-owners of Norfolk-based Lotus, Geely, are understood to be eyeing up a multi-billion pound floatation for the firm as it readies to open a new production plant in China and targets 100,000 sales a year by 2030.
The firm told City A.M that New York was the favoured destination for a floatation due to the access to the automotive investor base in the US and a spate of high valuation listings.
But London and Hong Kong are still in contention as second and third choice for a listing, with its “home market” still a viable option, a spokesperson told City A.M,.
They warned the firm was still 12-24 months off going public, however.
Lotus bosses are currently “testing the temperature” of investors across markets as they sound out the best destination to go public, and will meet with investors in Amsterdam in March to gauge the appetite for a Euronext listing, having met with a group of potential London investors last week.
The floatation plans come as part of a wider transformation from the firm from a loss-making brand loved by sports car aficionados into a mainstream motoring brand.
Geely is accelerating Lotus’s push into the “lifestyle vehicle” space and will begin building the first Lotus 4×4, an all-electric vehicle, and a zero-emission executive car.
Geely’s move to float Lotus follows a similar shakeup at Volvo, which it floated last year at a valuation of £13bn.
Stuart Andrews, Managing Director & Head of Capital Markets at finnCap Group, said a move to float the firm outside London was likely to trigger more soul-searching in the city.
“The surprise is not that it would seek to list elsewhere, but that once again the UK has sellers remorse over a business that the UK market could not or would not provide financing to,” he said.