Bollore's electric car battery company IPO oversubscribed

The listing of French battery manufacturer Blue Solutions is oversubscribed and will price at the top of its range, says chairman Vincent Bollore, as investors flock to the latest attempt to commercialise electric car technology.

The initial offering of the lossmaking company is "more than fully-booked", Mr Bollore said, with a week still to go before its market debut in Paris, valuing the company at as much as €418m.

Electric-powered cars, long-heralded as the future of the automotive industry, have brought much fanfare but have so far failed to make the jump to the mainstream and have rarely turned promise into profits. However, the interest in the Bollore-owned company, which mainly supplies batteries to city car-sharing schemes, suggest stumbling progress has not deterred investors.

"We don't know if the company will be very profitable or a disaster," said Mr Bollore, billionaire head of the family-controlled industrial group. "[But] if we succeed, the development could be huge."

The group is behind Autolib, a network of 1,700 electric cars in Paris that cost as little as €11 an hour to rent and have been used about 2.5m times. Autolib recently entered into a partnership with Renault to design and build cars.

Blue Solutions, which sells batteries to other Bollore-owned companies that build cars, boats and other products such as battery-powered homes, intends to exercise options to acquire its in-house customers over the next five years on the road to a 2022 sales target of more than €1.5bn.

"When you sell batteries to car producers . . . you don't earn," Mr Bollore said. "We think that a complete solution provider along the entire supply chain is more rewarding."

The company, which lost €100m last year and has spent about €1.7bn on research and development, expects to break even by the end of next year.

Facing ever more stringent environmental curbs and pressure from consumers for more fuel-efficient cars, the automotive industry has ploughed billions of dollars into electric, hybrid and other engine systems with mixed success and muted customer response.

Early-mover Nissan has acknowledged that it will not meet ambitious sales targets for its electric range, battery recharger Better Place and electric supercar maker Fisker have both recently gone bankrupt and Fiat-Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne has said the company loses $10,000 every time it sells an electric version of its Fiat 500 model.

But the trend towards electrified engines is slowly advancing, alongside improving batteries. BMW took the wraps off two electric-based sports cars this summer, and Volkswagen ended years of reluctance by throwing its hat into the electric ring.

The market value of Tesla, the US electric supercar manufacturer controlled by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has spiralled to $21bn - almost three-times Fiat's value.

For Mr Bollore, listing 11 per cent on the market is more about raising awareness than raising capital. "We want people to sit up and notice us," he said.

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