China Battery Maker Lishen Banks on Electric Car Boom for IPO
- Lishen to use funds to expand capacity to 20 gigawatt hours
- Demand for vehicle batteries seen surging eightfold by 2020
A canceled order by Motorola Inc. led to Lishen Battery scrapping plans for an initial public offering in 2007. Almost 10 years later, the Chinese state-owned manufacturer will again seek a listing, this time to raise funds to produce more electric-vehicle batteries.
Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co., as the company is known in full, is considering a listing in Shanghai or Shenzhen to expand its annual capacity to 20 gigawatt hours -- about 18 percent more than the estimated total battery consumption last year in China -- by 2020, according to President Qin Xingcai. As a publicly traded company, Lishen will also be better placed to attract and retain talent to compete globally with the likes of Samsung SDI Co. and Panasonic Corp., he said.