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Chinese new energy manufacturer Leapmotor has once again attracted the attention of European car giants. On October 26, at a signing ceremony held in Hangzhou, Stellantis Group reached an agreement with Leapmotor to invest about 1.5 billion euros to acquire about 20% of the equity of Leapcar.
The transaction makes Stellantis Group a significant shareholder and has direct access to two board seats. At the same time, Stellantis Group also formed a joint venture with Leapmotor Motor called "Leap International", with a 51%:49% shareholding ratio between the two parties.
Except for the Greater China region, Leap International will exclusively own the export and sales business to other markets around the world, and enjoy the right to produce its own brand electric vehicle products locally. As we all know, in the field of electrification, European, American and Japanese brands are significantly different from Chinese brands and are gradually lagging behind.
For this reason, Volkswagen had earlier invested 700 million euros to support Xpeng Motors and chose to participate in its development; Audi has also announced a partnership with Shanghai Volkswagen's Zhiji; Now, it is rumored that Leapmotor will cooperate with FAW-Volkswagen's Jetta brand. Obviously, China's new energy vehicle market has great potential.
At the end of July, when Leapmotor released the four-leaf clover "Leap Central Integrated Electronic and Electrical Architecture", the company said that the company will provide four technical cooperation methods: vehicle-level platform, chassis (including powertrain), high-performance computing module + peripheral controller, high-performance computing module + peripheral controller + battery pack and drive system. So far, the company has officially launched the third generation of its highly integrated and scalable platform, Leap3.0, and plans to launch the fourth generation platform in 2025.
Stellantis is a conglomerate with several well-known brands; However, it lacks competitiveness in the field of new energy. Through direct participation and access to mature electric vehicle production lines and technical support, Stellantis can help its low-end brands enter the global market as soon as possible and accelerate the development of pure electric OEM product lines for the world.
It should be noted that even with its poor performance in China, Stellantis is financially strong – its net revenue in the first half of 2023 was €98.4 billion, its net profit was €10.9 billion and its adjusted operating profit was €14.1 billion. Therefore, in terms of reserve funds, investing 1.5 billion euros is only a drop in the bucket for Stellantis.
Zerorun is by no means a loss-making deal. As we all know, Leapmotor is part of the car manufacturing business of Dahua Shares.
More than 400 million yuan (or HK$35) of the 1.5 billion euros taken out by Stellantis was used to purchase about 90 million yuan of Leap shares held by Dahua and complete the transaction at HK$38.81 per share; after the acquisition, Dahang will no longer hold any part of the property rights of Leap Motor - which means that about 90 million yuan invested eight years ago has achieved a 35-fold return rate so far - which is indeed amazing. To sum up, even if the wealth is lost a little, but it can be supported by mature electric technology that allows its brand to close, and the launch of new energy transformation for the global market for its low-end product lines, it is a sign that the victory of "cooperation is a win-win" is becoming clearer and clearer - the abstract of this article is from the original article of Che Lin Gaiden, and the reprint must be authorized by the author and indicate the source.