By Gilles Guillaume
PARIS (Reuters) – Renault wants to attract further investors to its electric vehicle unit Ampere and premium sports brand Alpine, CEO Luca de Meo said on Thursday.
With the auto industry looking beyond internal combustion engines and demand surging for car connectivity, both requiring massive investments, Renault is building technological and financial partnerships beyond its historic alliance with Nissan.
“We are exploring the possibility of involving other strategic investors in Ampere beyond Qualcomm (Technologies),” Luca de Meo said at Renault’s annual general meeting.
Nissan and Mitsubishi have indicated they may invest in the electric vehicle unit, which may go public as early as this year, market conditions permitting. The U.S. semiconductor maker has already said it will invest.
Sources have said the unit could be valued at up to 10 billion euros ($10.96 billion). BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are among the investment banks slated to work on the planned listing, a source told Reuters last month.
Meanwhile, Renault is working on two Alpine models for the U.S. market and possibly the Chinese market, de Meo added.
Alpine, Renault’s relaunched high-performance sports car brand which also supplies a Formula One racing team, grew its revenues by a third last year, selling just over 3,500 cars. The historic Alpine brand was world rallying champion in 1973.
De Meo said on Wednesday Alpine could also be listed, but that an IPO was not on the agenda for now.
A capital markets day for Ampere would be organised in the months ahead, de Meo told shareholders.
($1 = 0.9084 euros)
(Reporting by Gilles Guillaume, Writing by Richard Lough and Marine Strauss; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten, Richard Lough and Sharon Singleton)
