“We were lucky at the time,” said Thomas Healy, chief executive of the company.
Thomas Healy was secretly organizing a deal to turn his Texas-based truck electrification start-up into a publicly traded company when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
The crisis halted many transactions, but not the one between the special purpose acquisition vehicle Tortoise Acquisition Corp. and Hyliion Inc., which Healy founded in 2015.
The company formed as a result of the merger – Hyliion Holdings Corp. – began operations in New York on Friday after Tortoise shares jumped more than 300% ahead of the shareholder vote last month. Healy’s stake is now worth more than $ 1.4 billion, making him one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world. Still, the 28-year-old knows the odds were on the line.
“We were lucky at the time,” said Healy, chief executive of the company. “If we were trying to close at the same time the stock market was going down, maybe we would have had different discussions.”
There is growing skepticism about the phenomenon of blank checks, as these transactions have proliferated in recent weeks. PSPCs are now under scrutiny by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which wants to ensure that investors are provided with appropriate information about insider compensation structures.
Hyliion slipped 0.9% to $ 39.16 on Monday after falling 12% on its first full day of trading on Friday.
Bloomberg spoke to Healy before ringing the opening bell on Monday to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Comments have been edited and condensed.
How did the deal come about?
In the first quarter, we launched our next round of financing. Going public and being able to bring in more capital than staying private was attractive. From there, we considered: are we taking the conventional route of the IPO? Or do we want a PSPC process? We have seen many efficiencies with PSPCs. You’re really negotiating a deal with an organization rather than going on a roadshow for an IPO that might – or might not – be successful. We met the Tortoise team which was introduced to us via the investment bank Marathon Capital. It was the moment of “OK. Let’s do this! ‘
Thoughts on the SPAC craze?
PSPC has certainly garnered a lot of attention. Nikola was really the first to launch this year. We were already in the process of our transaction at that time. On our side, it was a very natural process with Tortoise. We were just going through a conventional funding funding process and then we saw this as the best route.
How did you start Hyliion?
Growing up, I ran cars. I spent a lot of time on the track driving vehicles. Our equipment was shipped in semi-trailers, so I got to know the trucks through that. Then, when I was in university, studying mechanical engineering, I got interested in electric vehicles. Tesla was just starting to catch on at the time, and I thought to myself: why do we have electric technology in cars and not yet in trucks, since trucks are where you can have the biggest impact? They travel 100,000 miles a year and there are still a lot of greenhouse gases coming from them. So that was this thinking, let’s take this mega trend – a shift to electrification – and apply it to this industry.
What keeps you busy outside of work?
I am a reducer at heart. I love working on cars, blowing them up and putting turbochargers in them. If I can spend a Saturday working on a vehicle, that’s cool. My daily driver is a Tesla, which is perfect for what we do. I also have an Ariel Atom, a two-seater that looks like a big go-cart.
Where do you want to be in 10 years?
Our goal is that you will be driving on the highway and that the trucks you see will be equipped with Hyliion powertrains. There will also be other electric trucks, which will take a different approach. We hope that all of these technologies will be successful as we are ultimately trying to go electric. The more people focus on this, the better off we’ll all be.
How do you celebrate the deal?
Normally, hundreds of people come to the stock exchange. It’s obviously a small group for us, but we’ll do our best to celebrate. Our entire Monday team can broadcast the bell ringing live. We’ll find a way to get them tacos for breakfast and give them at least a few hours to sit down and celebrate, as this process has been a total company effort.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
