Li Auto Passes HKEX Hearing, Opening Door for Dual Listing

According to information released Monday by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX), the holding company that owns the city’s stock exchange, Li Auto has passed a listing hearing, with Goldman Sachs and CICC acting as co-sponsors and UBS as its financial adviser.

The Beijing-based carmaker will seek to apply for a dual primary listing as an issuer with a different voting rights structure.

Li Auto is a Chinese new energy vehicle manufacturer that designs, develops, produces and sells luxury smart electric cars. The Ideal ONE, the company’s first and currently only commercially available electric vehicle, is a six-seat medium-to-large sized luxury SUV, equipped with an extended-range system and advanced smart car features.

Li Auto started mass production of the Ideal ONE in November 2019, later launching the revamped 2021 Ideal ONE on May 25 of this year. As of June 30, 2021, Li Auto had delivered more than 63,000 Ideal ONE models.

According to CIC, Ideal ONE was rated as the best-selling new energy SUV model in China last year, accounting for 9.7% of the market share. More broadly, the model ranked sixth in the country’s new energy vehicle market, accounting for a 2.8% share of the market, while the firm came in 11th among China’s new energy vehicle brands.

On top of that, new energy vehicles accounted for 5.8% of last year’s total sales of passenger cars in China, while extended-range electric vehicles accounted for just 2.8% of the domestic new energy vehicle market by sales.

As of June 30, 2021, Li Auto maintains 97 retail stores in major cities across China. The firm aims to locate its retail stores in shopping centers to reach its target consumers, rather than in central business districts or landmark buildings. As of May 31, Li Auto operates 36 delivery facilities and 27 service centers in the country.

According to the prospectus, the total revenue of Li Auto in 2020 was $1.4 billion. However, the automaker also dipped into the red, incurring net losses of $23.148 million and $54.943 million for 2020 and the first three months of 2021, respectively.

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