EV Startup VinFast’s Market Debut Pushes Value Higher Than GM, Ford

livemint.com:

startups as well as the limitations of the blank-check company structure through which it was taken public. The Vietnamese EV maker went public after merging with the special-purpose acquisition company Black Spade, a deal that resulted in $30 million in proceeds for VinFast. The stock, trading under the symbol “VFS," closed Tuesday at around $37 a share, up from Black Spade’s last closing price of $10.45.

On Wednesday, shares fell nearly 19% to $30.11, but even with the decline, VinFast was still worth more than its two larger rivals. GM’s market value stood at about $45 billion at the close of trading, while Ford’s worth was about $47 billion. “I thought the EV SPAC bubble was over, but I guess not," said David Whiston, an auto- industry analyst at Morningstar.

“It makes no sense to me that it’d be worth something approaching BMW and more than GM and Ford." In a prospectus filed in June ahead of the merger, VinFast said that at a minimum 99.1% of the shares would be owned by entities controlled by Pham Nhat Vuong, chairman of VinFast’s parent company in Vietnam. The company declined to say what exact percentage of shares outstanding are currently publicly traded. Young auto companies including Rivian Automotive, Lucid, Fisker and Lordstown Motors all garnered billions of dollars from public markets when they listed in the past couple of years.

Investors, eager to discover the next Tesla, piled into the stock of the companies, sending share prices soaring at times to eye-popping highs. Rivian was also at one point worth more than GM. Since then, the valuations of those companies have plummeted as they faced production delays and missed targets.