Geely steps in to rescue Polestar Automotive UK

Author: Yu Yan

Editor: Zhou Zhiyu

Born with a "silver spoon", Polestar, which has reached the brink of delisting, finally welcomed the intervention of a major shareholder.

Wall Street News learned on June 6th that Qinpengji, Vice President of Sales at Geely Auto Group, has officially joined Polestar Technology to replace Chen Siying as Chief Operating Officer, responsible for overall business areas such as sales, channel development, and marketing.

Previously, as a local sales leader, Qinpengji has done a lot of innovative work for Volvo's sales business in China. Especially in ensuring Volvo's leading position in direct sales among traditional luxury brands while also safeguarding the interests of dealers.

With Qinpengji's joining, it is foreseeable that Polestar will undergo changes in sales, channel development, and other business directions. In the future, as the major shareholder, Geely will also take a series of measures to strive to bring back this "small and beautiful" luxury car brand from the brink of delisting.

Of course, Polestar currently faces many issues. The biggest problem is that it has not yet submitted its 2023 financial report on time.

Previously, Polestar stated that it had received a notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market stating that it had not complied with the exchange's listing rules regarding timely submission of annual reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to Nasdaq listing rules, from the date of the notice, Polestar will have 60 days to submit a compliance plan to Nasdaq. If Nasdaq accepts this plan, Polestar may be granted an additional period of up to 180 days from the due date of the annual report, until November 11, 2024, to regain compliance with the continued listing requirements.

Furthermore, if Polestar's closing price remains below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days, it will also receive a delisting warning letter from Nasdaq and will need to raise the stock price to meet trading standards within the specified time to avoid delisting. As of June 5th, Polestar has closed below $1 for 11 consecutive trading days.

Polestar has stated that it expects to submit its annual report for the fiscal year ending December 31st and report its financial performance for the first quarter of 2024 by the end of June.

In less than two years since its listing, Polestar's situation is lamentable. Originally backed by Volvo and Geely, Polestar was one of the few complete vehicle manufacturers that successfully listed in the past two years. This was intended to give Polestar independent financing capabilities and to grow stronger in the capital market.

However, Polestar has not had an easy time in recent years.

Firstly, its vehicle development has been slow. Currently, Polestar has a total of four models. As a performance model derived from Volvo, Polestar's first model, the Polestar 1, was launched in 2018 with a price of 1.45 million yuan, positioned as a high-end performance model, but it has struggled to achieve significant sales even after 6 years.

Three years later, Polestar's second model, the Polestar 2, finally arrived. At that time, the representative of China's new forces in the market, XPeng, had entered a large-scale delivery phase, with the Polestar 2 priced starting at 299,800 yuan. However, due to low brand awareness and a failure to capture the highest purchasing willingness for new energy vehicles in the Chinese market, it faced another setback Until 2023, Polestar hurriedly entered the Chinese market, launching the Polestar 3 and the relatively lower-priced Polestar 4 (starting at 299,800 yuan). When price wars were escalating in the Chinese market, the Polestar 4 also had a limited-time price reduction of 60,000 yuan, but this did not contribute much to sales.

In 2023, Polestar delivered 54,600 cars globally, with only about 1,100 delivered in China; even since its sales in China in 2020, the cumulative sales have been only about 5,000 units. This year, focusing on volume over price, but by the end of April, Polestar had only sold about 940 cars in China.

Polestar's four products have significant price differences, and the models relying on volume sales are not accurately positioned in the market. Their marketing narrative heavily relies on Volvo's endorsement, but for Chinese consumers, the local electrification trend is booming, and narratives from Northern Europe are not enough to impress consumers.

The continuous low sales have also put pressure on Polestar financially. As of the end of September 2023, Polestar Automotive has incurred a profit loss of 468 million USD. In the previous two years, Polestar Automotive incurred losses of 1.007 billion USD and 466 million USD respectively.

To the extent that Volvo announced in February this year that it will no longer provide funding to Polestar and will transfer its stake in Polestar to Geely Holding. However, once the share transfer is completed, Polestar will also receive more resources from Geely to help it achieve its global growth goals.

Li Donghui, CEO of Geely Holding Group and a member of the Polestar Board of Directors, stated that Geely Holding will continue to provide comprehensive operational and financial support to Polestar, hold Polestar shares for the long term, and will participate in Polestar's future financing plans in due course.

With Geely executives such as Qin Peiji entering the Polestar management team, a reform storm is about to sweep through.

As a "new force" powerhouse backed by Geely and Volvo, Polestar is fortunate to still have a chance to turn things around. However, it is also necessary to see that with the changes in the global electric vehicle industry, some car manufacturers are delaying or reducing their electric vehicle plans, and investors are becoming more cautious about electric vehicle investments. In such an environment, whether Polestar can rise from the ashes remains to be seen, mostly depending on its own efforts