By John Revill
ZURICH (Reuters) – ABB has sold more of its electric vehicle (EV) charging business to four investors including a fund linked to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, the Swiss engineering company said on Wednesday.
The investors paid 325 million Swiss francs ($355 million) for a combined 12% stake in the E-Mobility business in a second and final private placement before its planned flotation this year, ABB said.
They include Just Climate, a UK-based investment firm set up by Gore – a long-time advocate of global efforts to combat climate change – and financier David Blood in 2021.
The firm said the investment “will help decarbonise road transport by accelerating the deployment of …solutions ranging from smart chargers for the home to high-power chargers for highway stations of the future.”
The other new E-Mobility investors are BeyondNetZero, the climate fund of private equity firm General Atlantic, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, and holding firm Porsche SE, Volkswagen’s top shareholder and a key investor in sportscar maker Porsche AG, ABB said.
Porsche SE said it had invested a “double-digit million euro amount”.
The breakdown of the stakes taken was not given by ABB, which had already raised around 200 million Swiss francs from allocating an 8% stake in the business to other investors.
The total of 525 million francs raised in both placements gives E-Mobility an equity value of roughly 2.63 billion Swiss francs.
The proceeds will be used to fund organic growth and acquisitions at the business, said ABB, which will retain a shareholding of around 80%.
ABB gave no further details of the timing of the float, which will take place in Switzerland, but CEO Bjorn Rosengren said it “remains committed to …separately list(ing) the business subject to constructive market conditions.”
($1 = 0.9155 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by John Revill, additional reporting by Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt; Editing by Paul Carrel and John Stonestreet)