U.S. electric-car maker Tesla Motors plans to go public soon, two sources familiar with the matter said, amid growing interest in green technology and battery-powered vehicles.
An IPO filing from the 6-year-old start-up, best known for its $109,000 all-electric Roadster, is expected any day, said one of the sources. The person did not give a specific time frame, although IPOs typically take several months.
Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes declined to comment on what he called "rumor or speculation."
Tesla Model S
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)Tesla would mark the first public offering from a U.S. automaker since Henry Ford's Ford Motor debuted its shares in 1956. The IPO represents a landmark in the resurgence of electric-car technology that most carmakers had dismissed as impractical until recently.
The company's chairman Elon Musk said early last year that an IPO was a possibility in either late 2008 or 2009.
But the financial market turmoil following the collapse of Lehman Bros. in the latter half of 2008 virtually shut down the IPO market. The appetite for IPOs has picked up since mid-September this year with a robust pace of new filings.
Tesla's IPO would follow the successful debut of lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems, whose shares rallied 50 percent on their first day of trading on September 25.
Analysts have said that the success of A123, the first green-technology IPO this year, would encourage more venture capital-backed green companies to go public.
Tesla will compete with established automakers like Ford, General Motors, and Nissan Motor, all of which are racing to launch electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. Tesla, by contrast, is a small player with a high-end market and limited production.
A combination of factors has driven the recent interest in developing electric, or partially electric vehicles, including the Obama administration's push to have 1 million rechargeable vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015 and low-cost Department of Energy loans for manufacturers.
Venture funds back green cars
The carmaker is developing a second, lower-cost model, an electric sedan known as the Model S, which will have a base price of $49,900.
Tesla said in September it delivered 700 Roadsters since February 2008. The Roadster, which is built on a Lotus frame, can go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in less than four seconds, making it faster than a Porsche 911 or a Ferrari Spider.
The electric-car start-up was offered $465 million in low-cost loans by the U.S. Department of Energy to help build the new Model S. Tesla said it will build the new car in California.
Tesla's investors include Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Other investors include Daimler; Abu Dhabi-based Aabar Investments, which owns a stake in Daimler; and venture capital funds Valor Equity Partners, Technology Partners, The Westly Group, and Compass Venture Partners.
Tesla said it had achieved overall corporate profitability in July with about $1 million of earnings on revenue of $20 million.
But like established automakers, survival in the hyper-competitive U.S. automotive market has not been easy for Tesla. The company had to face cost overruns and production delays for the Roadster.
Story Copyright (c) 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Additional stories from Reuters
Shares of GT Solar stock fell by 15 percent on the second day of trading. The Merrimack, N.H., company calls itself one of the largest suppliers of silicon photovoltaic solar equipment.
Its stock, under the ticker symbol SOLR on the NASDAQ market, was priced at $16.50 per share for the $500 million initial public offering of 30.3 million shares Thursday. That fell to $12.36 per share in midday trading.
The company declined to comment.
GT Solar's stock was overpriced by as much as two times compared to close competitor Centrotherm of Germany, said Ted Sullivan, senior analyst at Lux Research. The firm predicted in March that a solar bubble would burst as solar supplies exceed demand in the coming year. For instance, many analysts forecast that a shortage of silicon will end soon.
"This is not a sign of the end of solar," Sullivan added. "There's a good proposition that there will be healthy IPOs coming up if a solar company is able to muster truly disruptive technology. If one of the OptiSolars or Solyndras of the world can get next-generation thin-film technologies working and viable, that would be attractive."
Public offerings of renewable-energy companies have been weak through the first half of 2008. Analysts have described clean-tech companies as a bright spot despite a decline in venture capital funding.
Solar panel installer Real Goods is the only other U.S. solar company to go public this year. Its stock was trading at $6.04 at press time, down from its initial price of $9 per share in May.
Wind energy company Noble Environmental Power has filed to raise as much as $375 million in an initial public offering, according to a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission that was filed Thursday.
The Connecticut-based company, which plans to list its shares with the Nasdaq under the symbol "NEPI," operates in the booming wind power market. But the company will still have to brave a weak IPO market.
The 4-year-old Noble runs wind parks in New York state that generate about 282 megawatts of electricity; and later this year, it plans to open added parks in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Maine, and Texas. Noble is seeing demand for wind power in the Northeast partly because of renewable energy mandates in the area. But the wind-power industry is hampered by a shortage of wind turbines.
Noble plans to use the money from the IPO to develop its business, invest in new technologies, and ink future turbine supply agreements. Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Securities, and Credit Suisse Securities, are underwriting the IPO.
- prev
- 1
- next
