Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) yesterday said it is on track to debut its shares on the NASDAQ by the end of this quarter through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Poema Global Holdings Corp.
The Taoyuan-based electric scooter maker and battery swapping service provider made the comments after it gained Hero Motocorp, Engine No. 1 and other investors in the middle of last month, raising its oversubscribed private investment in public equity from US$257 million to US$285 million.
“We are working through due diligence for [the US Securities and Exchange Commission]. We should complete it, we hope, in the first week of March,” Gogoro chief financial officer Bruce Aitken told an online news conference. “We are on track to complete the overall transaction by the end of the first quarter. It is our goal.”
Photo: Tyrone Siu, Reuters
Gogoro shares would be listed on the NASDAQ under the stock symbol “GGR.”
Asked what attracted it to Gogoro, Engine No. 1 portfolio manager Edward Sun said that when he first met Gogoro founder and chief executive officer Horace Luke (陸學森) in 2017, Gogoro mostly focused on making hardware, or electric scooters.
Sun said he thought it might be too risky to bet on an electric scooter maker, but he became interested after Gogoro strategically shifted its business model to capitalize on selling green energy by subscription.
“Subscription is a high-margin business and is something sustainable,” he said.
The battery swapping service offered by Gogoro is a better solution than traditional charging methods, Sun said.
Furthermore, Gogoro’s new business model is “almost like the Android of the electric scooter world,” as it is forming partnerships with other vehicle makers, Sun said.
Those partnerships in China, India and Southeast Asia would greatly increase Gogoro’s chances of penetrating these emerging markets, he said.
The market size in China, India and Southeast Asia combined is 80 times larger than the market in Taiwan, he said, adding that in India, 82 percent of all vehicles are two wheelers, while the figure in Indonesia is even higher at 90 percent.
Gogoro last month said that it has teamed up with Electrum to build an electric vehicle ecosystem in Indonesia, the third-largest two-wheel vehicle market in the world, with a focus on two-wheel vehicles and developing a high-efficiency battery.
In China, Gogoro is partnering with China’s biggest scooter maker, Yadea Technology Group Co (雅迪科技集團), and Jiangmen Dachangjiang Group Co (大江集團).
Gogoro also plans to expand its reach into New Delhi by teaming up with Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s biggest motorcycle maker.
As an activist firm, Engine No. 1 helped ExxonMobil Corp and General Motors in slashing global carbon dioxide emissions, but Sun did not disclose any substantial plan to accelerate Gogoro’s decarbonization.
Engine No. 1 in May last year won a campaign to replace three seats on the board of Exxon Mobil, but it has no plan to take any seats on Gogoro’s board.
“Gogoro has a strong board. There is no reason to take a board seat,” Sun said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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