Swedish EV maker Polestar to go public via merger with SPAC Gores Guggenheim in $20 billion deal

Swedish electric car maker Polestar Performance AB said Monday it is going public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Gores Guggenheim Inc. in a deal with an implied enterprise value of about $20 billion. The new company will be renamed Polestar Automotive Holding UK Limited and is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "PSNY". Polestar was founded in 2017 by Volvo Cars and Zhejiang Geely Holding and is a pure play electric car maker with two vehicles, the Polestar 1 and Polestar 2, which are currently on roads in Europe, North America and Asia. The company is planning to launch three new models by 2024. It delivered about 10,000 vehicles in 2020 and expects to sell about 290,000 a year by 2025. Existing investors include Volvo Car Group and affiliates of Geely Chairman Eric Li, as well as actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio. The deal includes a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, of about $250 million , which will be added to the roughly $800 million in cash currently held by the SPAC. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.