Sunnyvale lidar startup Quanergy’s merger with Chinese SPAC wins shareholder OK
Lidar maker Quanergy Systems Inc.’s plan to go public in a merger with a Hong Kong-based blank check company got a green light on Monday.
Shareholders of Citic Capital Acquisition Corp. voted overwhelmingly to approve the deal, according to a regulatory filing by the special purpose acquisition company.
But Citic (NYSE:CCAC) didn’t say in the post how many of its shares were redeemed ahead of the merger. Nor did it say when the combined companies will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol QNGY.
SPACs raise money in initial public offerings that they plan to use to take a private company public. But since they don’t know who that will be when they do their IPO, they offer shareholders the option of getting all of their money back after the target company is identified.
Redemption rates on SPAC deals rose sharply last year as the allure of such blank check mergers lost some of their appeal. The average monthly SPAC redemption rate in the first half of 2021 was between 7% and 43%, according to SPAC Research/SPAC Alpha. In the second half that rose to about 60%.
When the deal was announced last June, Quanergy said it expected to get $276 million in cash from the merger. That amount includes $40 million from a private placement investment being done in connection with the merger and $236 million that Citic has in trust from what it raised in its IPO.
Quanergy designs lidar devices to help guide autonomous vehicles. The merger was projected to result in a value of the combined companies of $1.4 billion.
In November, the merger partners projected that the Quanergy’s revenue would grow from about $4 million in 2021 to about $18 million this year and $83 million in 2023. They projected an adjusted loss of about $32 million in 2021 would swing to an adjusted profit of $53 million in 2024. But those adjusted earnings numbers leave out significant costs.
