Aston Martin aims for €771 million in new capital

Financially, Aston Martin has been on the drip for some time. The introduction of the DBX helped the brand to increase sales, but at the bottom of the line Aston Martin still reached a red figure of €255 million in 2021. The money is therefore leaking out quite hard, while the British manufacturer has a considerable task waiting in the field of electric driving. In 2030, Aston Martin must be fully electric and in 2025 the first EV must already be in the showrooms.

To be able to pay for those investments, Aston Martin goes with the hat to its shareholders and potential new investors. Not without success, because with the Saudi investment fund PIF Aston Martin has a new investor on board. PIF is going to invest €91.9 million in Aston Martin in exchange for 16.7 percent of the shares. This makes PIF, which also has interests in Lucid Motors and McLaren, one of the largest shareholders of the brand. In addition to PIF, the Yew Tree Consortium (Lawrence Stroll’s investment firm) and Mercedes-Benz AG are also investing in Aston Martin. According to the proposal, the total investment of these three parties amounts to more than €395 million, the remaining €376 Aston Martin wants to raise with a public share issue.

With this investment strategy, Aston Martin is refusing a bid from the Atlas Consortium, a collaboration between the Investindustrial Group and Geely. That conglomerate offered an investment of the equivalent of €1.53 billion, but in exchange for a hefty bite of the shares. According to Aston Martin, that would not have been beneficial for existing shareholders.

Destination of the investment

Aston Martin has a number of concrete plans with that money. Naturally, the investment contributes to the electrification of the brand according to the strategy outlined earlier. Aston Martin aims to have its first PHEV on the market by 2024, its first EV by 2025 and a fully electrified portfolio of sports cars and SUVs by 2030. But the money will also be used for ‘the next generation of front-engine sports cars’, i.e. the successors of the DB11 and Vantage, and to further strengthen the DBX portfolio. Aston Martin also wants to invest money in the development of the mid-engine hypercars, the upcoming Valhalla and Vanquish. The money must also contribute to the repayment of outstanding debts of the brand, so that the interest to be paid goes down.

Aston Martin eventually wants to sell 10,000 cars per year, a turnover of approximately €2.3 billion and a profit of approximately €590 million. That is quite something. Aston Martin says the order book is well filled for this year. However, the brand has suffered from supply chain issues that delayed the first deliveries of the DBX 707. Aston Martin sold 2,676 cars in the past six months, compared to 2,901 in the same period last year. Still, Aston Martin says it is still on track to meet its sales target of 6,600 cars this year.