Glendale-based car battery maker Clarios has elected to postpone its initial public offering scheduled for Thursday.
The former car battery unit of Glendale-based Johnson Controls International had planned to offer a nearly 20% stake in the company or sell about 88.1 million shares between $17 and $21 each.
Clarios is now suspending its IPO, which would have raised more than $1.62 billion, “given current market conditions,” the company said in a statement Thursday.
“We received positive feedback through the marketing process and are committed to keeping the market informed as we reassess the environment over the coming months,” Clarios said in a statement. “As the largest low-voltage battery manufacturer in the world, Clarios is well-positioned to satisfy the evolving needs of the vehicles of the future and we are confident in our long-term growth prospects and the market opportunity ahead.”
Clarios had confidentially filed for a listing in May – previous reports suggested the company aimed to be valued at $20 billion. Including the company’s debt, the enterprise could have been valued at as much as $18 billion.
However, what has been a record-breaking year for the U.S. IPO market appears to have now lost some momentum. Robinhood Markets Inc. on Wednesday priced its IPO at the bottom of a marketed range to raise $2.1 billion while Dole Plc lowered the amount it was seeking to raise in its IPO to $515 million, which was at the top of a revised price range, according to a Bloomberg report.
Data compiled by Bloomberg suggests that 690 companies have raised more than $229 billion in listings since Jan. 31.
Clarios was created when Johnson Controls spun off its power solutions business and sold it for $13.2 billion in May 2019 to Brookfield Business Partners, a Canadian private equity firm, and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CPDQ), an institutional investor that manages public pension plans in Quebec.
The company’s portfolio consists of battery technologies designed to power virtually every type of passenger, commercial and recreational vehicle, from conventional to fully electric. Its primary customers are global automakers, wholesale distributors, auto retailers and big box stores.
Clarios generated more than $7.6 billion in revenue and sold 143 million batteries for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2020. The business generated $8.5 billion in revenue and sold 153 million batteries for the same period in 2019.
The battery maker has the number one market position in both the Americas and EMEA, and the number three market position in Asia. The majority of demand for Clarios products comes from the aftermarket channel, driven by consumer replacements.
A 2020 BizTimes Milwaukee cover story took an extensive, in-depth look at the company.
