Polestar, the electrified sister brand of Volvo had recently announced its intention to go public
The company will be valued at up to $25 billion
Chinese automaker Geely will remain the largest shareholder
A week ago, Polestar, the electric car company that is related to Volvo, announced its intention to go public as a way to increase its budget for expansion.
At the time, rumours said that Volvo would follow the same path, and those rumours were true, since the Swedish automaker has now confirmed it will go public on Stockholm’s NASDAQ.
Some sources say the company could be valued at up to $25 billion. The proceeds from the sales of shares will be used to speed up the automaker’s transition to fully electric vehicles, which is supposed to be complete by 2030.
Geely, the Chinese company that owns both Volvo and Polestar, will remain the company’s largest shareholder and its Swedish institutional shareholders, AMP and Folksam will also remain. Volvo stated that staying in the Geely “ecosystem” allows it to share technologies with other brands and make economies of scale.
The high valuation that can be achieved by the company shows how far it has come since 2010, when Ford Motor Company sold it at a loss to Geely.
Ford had bought the car division of Volvo for $6.5 billion in 1999, and after years of stagnation, it sold the company for 1.8 billion.
Since then, the Chinese owner has invested massively into making Volvo profitable again, by allowing the company to overhaul its whole range of cars as well as building two factories in China and one in South Carolina, its first plant in the United States.
Sales of the company also reflect this transformation since its global sales were 334,808 units in 2009 compared to 705,452 units in 2019, the first time it sold more than 700,000 vehicles in its history.
