British luxury performance car manufacturer Aston Martin Lagonda has announced it will go public and float on the London Stock Exchange later this year at an IPO value of £5 billion – that’s almost $9 billion AUD.
Half-yearly profits have reached record levels after seven consecutive profitable quarters for the automaker who has also coincidentally been bankrupt seven times, confirms Business Insider.
Aston Martin Lagonda CEO, Dr. Andy Palmer, shared his excitement about the move.
“When I started in 1979 there were lots of British car companies. Over the course of my career those have disappeared. Car making in the UK is in a healthy state, but companies are foreign owned. Now we will have an independent British car company again.”
The company’s aim is to boost Asian market sales from 16% to over a quarter annually. The public listing of over 25% of shares could also see it enter the FTSE 100, depending on the company’s early performance.
Invest Industrial, Italian backers of the automaker along with Kuwaiti group Investment Dar, will sell some shares. Dailmer’s 4.9% stake in the company will remain unchanged.
Aston Martin hopes to sell between 6,200 to 6,400 cars this year with an incremental increase to a goal of 9,800 in 2020. The relaunch of its Lagonda brand in the coming years will see it make headway in the luxury electric car segment. It is also hedging its bets that the new Aston Martin SUV will be a hit, though we honestly can’t see how it can even be called an SUV at this stage.
Here’s hoping some dramatic changes from conception to reality are coming in due course. The Valkyrie looks batshit insane, though. We can’t wait for that one.
