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Chinese giant Wanxiang wins bid for bankrupt A123 and its battery tech

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, cleantech, Date Certain M&A, Distressed IP, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, International Business, Investments, IPO news, Market research, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

Chinese auto tech behemoth Wanxiang has won the bidding process in an auction to buy the assets of bankrupt battery maker A123 Systems. On Sunday the companies announced that Wanxiang plans to acquire most of the assets of A123 for $256.6 million. It’s news that could be a bit controversial, given A123 received a $132 million grant from the U.S. government, and could now be owned by a Chinese company.

The winning bid beat out Johnson Control’s bid to acquire A123′s automotive division. Johnson Controls previously had offered to buy the automotive division and two factories for $125 million.

One of the reasons Wanxiang’s offer to buy up A123 had been controversial was because A123 had some U.S. military contracts, which critics didn’t want to see in the hands of a Chinese company. But A123 decided to sell off its government business, including all its U.S. military contracts, to Illinois-based company Navitas Systems, for $2.25 million. Wanxiang acquired the rest of the assets including the grid storage business.

We’ll see if that move silences politician critics like U.S. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). The deal still has to be approved by the bankruptcy court as well as the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States (CIFIUS).

If approved, the future of A123 System’s lithium ion battery tech will fittingly be owned by a Chinese auto giant, as China is increasingly becoming one of the most important markets for electric vehicles. Money from Chinese investors, conglomerates, cities and the government, continues to drive a significant amount of the future of next-generation electric car technology.

The deal also provides a future for A123′s technology, which had a promising beginning, but had suffered a series of setbacks in 2012. Venture-backed A123 held the largest IPO in 2009, raising some $371 million, and was trading at over $20 per share when it started trading. A123 also raised more than $350 million from private investors when it was still a startup.

Yet in recent months, it suffered from manufacturing problems, and also had only a handful of customers for its premium batteries. The company had been losing boat loads of money for years.

The Wanxiang deal still won’t make back enough to cover its debts. A123 says:

Because the total purchase price for A123’s assets would be less than the total amount owed to creditors, the Company does not anticipate any recoveries for its current shareholders and believes its stock to have no value.

Now that the A123 bankruptcy is moving forward, it will be interesting to see what Fisker Automotive, one of A123′s prime customers, will do. Fisker had told the media that it is waiting for the results of the A123 auction before it starts back up assembling its Karma cars.

This isn’t Wanxiang’s first cleantech and clean energy acquisition — it’s actually its fifth in 2012, says the company in a release. Wanxiang has been aggressively acquiring under valued American cleantech and clean energy companies.

Read more here.

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The Key to Greentech IPOs: Government Backing

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interesting article on Cleantech/ Greentech IPO´s from Earth2Tech.

“Electric car maker Tesla Motors officially delivered the biggest venture backed IPO of the quarter, raising $226 million, according to numbers out this week from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. What made the public debut different from some of the other venture-backed IPOs that happened this quarter? Well, among a variety of things, last summer Tesla managed to score a coveted $465 million in loans from the Department of Energy.

The link with Uncle Sam likely helped allay investors fears over supporting a risky company that has yet to make a profit and doesn’t plan on making any profits for the next two years. Tesla isn’t the only greentech IPO hopeful backed by the government. In fact, a large number of the greentech companies that have been gunning for the public market, or have recently gone public, have significant government support.

Take lithium ion battery maker A123Systems. The venture-backed company raised $371 million in its public debut in 2009, which was the largest IPO of the year, and represented about a third of the overall IPO market that year in terms of dollars raised. A123 secured a sizable $249 million grant from the Department of Energy last summer.

Before Tesla, the venture-backed greentech IPO hopeful of the hour was solar panel maker Solyndra, which hosted a speech by President Obama in May. Last year the company won a whopping $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, and that loan guarantee translated into a loan from the U.S. Treasury. However, despite the government support, investors’ appetites for solar, and Solyndra’s, IPO just wasn’t there and Solyndra ended up ditching its IPO plans last month, in lieu of raising funding from its current investors.

This week, shortly after Tesla’s IPO, an investor behind another venture-backed and government-supported electric car maker suggested it will also one day go public. That would be Fisker Automotive, and Ray Lane, the Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist and former Oracle executive, said this week that “Certainly we would plan to sell shares in the public market once the Karma is on the road and we have visibility into the revenue plan.” In April Fisker closed a $528.7 million loan agreement that will be used to help the startup launch its luxury plug-in hybrid model and set up manufacturing in Delaware for a line of lower-cost plug-in hybrids.

Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks, which has been planning an IPO for the last six months, might not have direct government support, but the close to $4 billion in funds for smart grid projects from the U.S. stimulus package has been a major boon to its utility customers. The Silver Spring folks told me in an email last year that the funding “will go a long way toward accelerating and broadening deployment of the critical smart grid infrastructure.” Silver Spring is working with stimulus award winners Florida Power & Light, Oklahoma Gas and Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, PHI Holdings (including PEPCO, Atlantic City and PEPCO DC) and Modesto Irrigation District.

Other rumored greentech IPO hopefuls (here’s Earth2Tech’s 10 Greentech IPO Picks) that have some sort of government support include solar thermal developer BrightSource Energy and Smith Electric Vehicles. BrightSource received a commitment earlier this year from the Department of Energy for a $1.37 billion loan guarantee to build out BrightSource’s Ivanpah solar project, which is set to be the first new solar thermal power plant built in California’s deserts in 20 years. Smith Electric Vehicles won a $10 million DOE battery grant last summer, and added $22 million under the same program in March.

Of course, not all of the greentech IPO candidates are under the wing of the U.S. government. Biofuel developer Amyris is planning a $100 million IPO without direct government support. But the odds are if you see a greentech startup hit the Nasdaq it’s got Uncle Sam in its corner.

The reality says a couple things about the greentech industry and the IPO market in general. First the IPO market for venture-backed startups is actually relatively weak right now. A significant amount of companies have actually pulled their IPOs in recent weeks and that extra bit of confidence via government support can help push these plans onto the public markets (Solyndra as the exception).

Another issue is that many of the government loans, grants and loan guarantees given to these greentech startups come attached with a cost-sharing requirement over a certain time frame. To unlock the full extent of the government funding companies like Tesla and Solyndra have to raise their own matching funding, by a certain date, and many are turning to the public markets for that.”

Read the whole article here.

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