A VinFast electric car on display at the New York Auto Show, April 13, 2022.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC
Vietnamese electric car maker VinFast said on Friday that it will list in the United States through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Company acquired Black Spade.
The move comes after the startup said last month it had received a new round of funding commitments worth $2.5 billion from parent company Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest conglomerate and founder of Vingroup. Pham Nhat Vuong, the first billionaire and richest person in Vietnam.
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Following the merger, the new organization will have an enterprise value of approximately $27 billion and an equity value of $23 billion, “assuming no BSAQ shareholders choose to repurchase their Black Spade shares for cash as permitted,” VinFast and Black Spade said in a statement. Joint statement.
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2023, adding that VinFast’s current shareholders will hold about 99% of the company’s shares after the merger.
VinFast, which was founded in 2017 and started selling electric vehicles in California this year, previously filed for an initial public offering in the US for listing on Nasdaq under the stock ticker “VFS” in September. 12 years ago, with the goal of raising about 60 billion USD.
The company says it has nearly 55,000 orders globally and can produce 300,000 electric vehicles a year.
Black Spade Acquisition is a Hong Kong-based SPAC listed on the NYSE in July 2021 with plans to merge, within two years, with a company ideally in the entertainment business, according to the company’s website. company.
It was founded by Black Spade Capital Limited, the private investment arm of Lawrence Ho, head of Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd, which operates casinos in Macau and the Philippines, according to the company’s website and Refinitiv.
“Partnering with Black Spade and listing VinFast in the US is the perfect fundraising path for our future global ambitions,” said Thuy Le, VinFast’s global CEO.
VinFast’s move to list through a special-purpose acquisition company follows companies like Microvast, Faraday Future, Nikola Corp and Lucid, despite the cooling off of the once frenetic SPAC market, which has already more closely monitored by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
SPACs are seen as a quick route to the stock market, especially for auto tech companies, and have proven popular with investors who want a Tesla-like stock valuation — though Although valuations of merged companies often decline for several months after listing.
