VinFast, a Vietnamese manufacturer of electric vehicles, declared on Friday that it would merge with Black Spade Acquisition Co., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and list in the United States.
The startup's announcement that it had received pledges for a fresh round of funding totaling $2.5 billion from parent company Vingroup, the biggest conglomerate in Vietnam, and founder Pham Nhat Vuong, who is also the nation's first and richest billionaire, sparked the current action.
In a joint statement, VinFast and Black Spade estimated that the combined business would be worth about $27 billion with an equity value of $23 billion, "assuming no BSAQ shareholders elect to have their Black Spade shares redeemed for cash as permitted."
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2023, it said, adding existing shareholders of VinFast will hold approximately 99 per cent of the shares of the combined company.
VinFast, which was founded in 2017 and began selling EVs in California this year, previously filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. to list on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol "VFS" in December last year, aiming for a valuation of about $60 billion.
The company has said it has almost 55,000 orders globally and is able to churn out 300,000 EVs per year.
Black Spade Acquisition is a Hong Kong-based SPAC which listed on the NYSE in July 2021 with a plan to merge, within two years, with a company ideally in the entertainment business, according to its website.
According to the organization's website and Refinitiv, it was founded by Black Spade Capital Limited, the private investment arm of Lawrence Ho, the CEO of Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd, which manages casinos in Macau and the Philippines.
VinFast's global CEO Thuy Le stated that the company's partnership with Black Spade and upcoming NASDAQ listing in the United States "represent the ideal capital raising avenue for our future global ambitions."
Despite a slowdown in the once-frothing SPAC market, which has come under closer scrutiny by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, VinFast's decision to list via a special purpose acquisition company follows the likes of EV companies Microvast, Faraday Future, Nikola Corp., and Lucid. SPACs are seen as a quick route to the stock market, particularly for auto technology firms, and have proven popular with investors seeking Tesla-like stock valuations - although the valuation of merged firms often falls in the months after listing.