Member Article

Smith Electric Vehicles look for investment for growth

Smith Electric Vehicles Kansas City division is making a renewed pushed on its IPO, as the firm looks to raise cash to support growth.

Smith, who also have a production facility in the North East of England, announced it planned to raise $125m in November last year.

In a company filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company said it required continued capital investment to pursue its growth-orientated plans.

The filing also detailed plans to improve Smith’s New York City facility at the end of the year to become an assembly plant, as part of plans to grow sales, service and assembly facilities throughout targeted urban areas in the US.

In February of this year, Smith entered into a joint venture with Chinese company Wanxiang Group, to develop, manufacture and commercialise all-electric school buses and commercial vehicles for industries in China, under the Smith brand.

As part of the agreement, Wanxiang has so far invested $1.5m in Smith, and Smith say talks are ongoing with the Chinese firm to secure a further $25m of intended investment.

In the filing, Smith noted that renewed focus on existing customers and supply chain constraints meant they had reassessed estimated production targets from 620 to 380.

Smith said: “We expect that our number of available production slots will increase in subsequent years following the transition of our supply chain from low-volume suppliers to medium-volume automotive-grade suppliers, which will allow us to ramp our production and increase our production capacity.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .