Leading Chinese electric vehicle battery maker CATL has more than tripled the size of a planned overseas bond issue to raise capital for a plant under construction in Germany, as well as for other purposes.
The supplier plans to issue no more than $3 billion in bonds in overseas markets, the company said this week. That is significantly higher than the $800 million it said it planned to raise in November with an overseas bond issue.
Proceeds from the bond sale will be deployed to fund overseas plant construction, repay bank loans and cover general operational expenses, CATL said, without disclosing additional details.
In October, CATL broke ground on an EV battery plant in the German state of Thuringia to supply BMW Group and other European automakers.
The 1.8 billion-euro ($2 billion) factory is expected to churn out 14 gigawatt-hours of battery cells and modules in 2022, according to CATL.
CATL, based in Ningde in east China’s Fujian province, has three battery-cell production sites in China.
At the end of 2019, the company’s annual battery-cell production capacity in China reached 31.7 GWh, accounting for 51 percent of the national total, according to the China Industrial Association of Power Sources.
With domestic EV sales hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, CATL estimated first-quarter net profit dropped 20 to 30 percent to 733 million yuan ($104 million) to 838 million yuan, according to a company filing last week on the Shenzhen stock exchange where it is listed.
