Porsche’s initial public offering has been a resounding success in its first week and a half on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. After ringing the bell as Europe’s largest IPO by market cap, Porsche Group initially saw a small dip before rising to meteoric heights on Thursday with a peak of 84 billion euros at market close. The shares have fallen minorly since, but still remain as the highest value automaker in Europe, overtaking former parent company Volkswagen Group. That’s right, tiny little Porsche is worth more on its own than the company that includes Volkswagen, Audi, Lamborghini, Skoda, Seat, Bentley, and Ducati, among others. Wow, that’s just wild.
Porsche’s IPO has been teased by VW Group for seemingly years now, and it’s finally gone through. Before the IPO Porsche’s valuation was fluctuating wildly, as it was facing lots of issues with supply chain and delivery. When the company launched, Volkswagen Group was looking to get a valuation of around 73 billion euros for its divestment spinoff of Porsche. Shares sold between the IPO and October 4th represent just 11% of the company, as most of the value of the company has been retained by Porsche Holdings, which is largely the ownership of the Porsche and Piech families. An additional 14.85 million shares, valued currently at about 1.2 billion euros, will be released to help keep the listing stable in its first few months on the market. That stabilization measure seems to be doing exactly what it was intended to.
At current market, Volkswagen Group is valued at about 78 billion, a few billion short of Porsche’s value solo. Both of those companies are well clear of Mercedes-Benz (57.2 billion euro), BMW Group (47.5 billion euro), and third largest selling automaker in the world Stellantis (39.7 billion euros). Considering Stellantis sells about 6.5 million cars per year as compared to Porsche’s measly 302,000-ish cars sold last year, it’s so crazy that the smaller company is worth about twice as much. Then again Tesla shipped just shy of a million cars in 2021, and currently has a market cap about eight times what Porsche’s is, so obviously delivery numbers are meaningless.
What moves will Porsche make to keep its shareholders happy? Hurrying up with that electric Macan launch will surely help.