CATL Wraps Up USD6.7 Billion Private Placement Led by Guotai Junan
Tang Shihua
DATE:  Jun 23 2022
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
CATL Wraps Up USD6.7 Billion Private Placement Led by Guotai Junan CATL Wraps Up USD6.7 Billion Private Placement Led by Guotai Junan

(Yicai Global) June 23 -- Contemporary Amperex Technology has secured CNY44.9 billion (USD6.7 billion) in a private placement of new shares led by brokerage Guotai Junan Securities which the Chinese electric car battery giant will use to build four new factories.

Shanghai-based Guotai Junan contributed CNY4.7 billion (USD700 million), the battery maker said yesterday. Other major participants included US investment bank JPMorgan Chase, UK lender Barclays Bank as well as private equity firmHillhouse Capital and Chinese brokerage firms Shenwan Hongyuan and GF Securities.

The new share issuance was priced at CNY410 (USD61.10) apiece, a 19 percent discount on yesterday’s closing price, it said. CNY38 billion (USD5.6 billion) of the proceeds will be used to expand capacity in four new plants and CNY7 billion will go towards building a new research and development center, it added.

Two of the four new production facilities will be built in Ningde, southeastern Fujian province where CATL is based. Another will be in Zhaoqing, southern Guangdong province and the fourth in Changzhou, eastern Jiangsu, it said. Investment in three of the projects will be more than CNY10 billion each.

The scale of the fundraising is noticeably less than originally anticipated. The battery maker set its sights on CNY58.1 billion when it first announced the private placement plan in August last year. There have been some adjustments to the plan since then, however, with the firm now having four expansion projects rather than five and the CNY9.3 billion allotted to supplement working capital has been removed.

Yet the world’s biggest battery maker is not short of cash as business is booming. It had CNY78.7 billion (USD1.9 billion) in the bank at the end of the first quarter, compared to only CNY23.2 billion at the end of 2019, according to Wind data.

CATL’s stock price [SHE:300750] closed up 5.91 percent today at CNY536.97 (USD80), the highest since early March.

Editor: Kim Taylor

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Keywords:   Private Placement,Capacity Expansion,R&D,Power Battery,CATL