SPAC Deal Puts Electric Truck Maker on Nasdaq

Xos, the electric-powered truck manufacturer with offices in North Hollywood, is to become a publicly traded company following its merger with Special Purpose Acquisition Company NextGen Acquisition Corp., it was announced on Feb. 22.

The Atwater Village-based truck manufacturer and its merger partner in Boca Raton, Fla. will have a pro forma market cap of $2 billion. It will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol XOS after the deal closes in the second quarter.As a SPAC, NextGen Acquisition just went public in October, having raised $350 million in its initial public offering. It was founded by George Mattson, a former partner at Goldman Sachs & Co., and Gregory Summe, former chief executive of PerkinElmer Inc. and vice chairman of Carlyle Group.In a conference call to discuss the deal, Mattson said there were three key areas for the merger.First was that Xos was poised for tremendous growth; second is that it is an original equipment manufacturer with proprietary purpose-built vehicle architecture and battery system technologies; and third is that its founders, Chief Executive Dakota Semler and Gio Sordoni, the chief operating officer, put together a great team, Mattson said.

“We have worked closely with Dakota and Gio over the last three months and are impressed by their strong leadership, strategic vision and entrepreneurial zeal,” Mattson said during the call. “Customer focus has been part of Xos’ DNA from day one. They have a deep understanding of the commercial trucking industry through their prior management of a commercial fleet, and care deeply about decarbonizing transportation.” NextGen, founded specifically to merge with or acquire an existing company, evaluated more than 30 companies in depth, including eight companies in the electric vehicle and automotive technology sectors before picking Xos, Mattson said.

“Since 2019, Xos has had vehicles on the road and in the hands of our customers, which include UPS, Wiggins, Lonestar and Loomis, validating our durable and low-cost sustainable design,” Sordoni said in a statement.  “Today’s announcement represents a major milestone that allows Xos to expand its vehicle and battery manufacturing capacity, advance our next generation battery and vehicle control systems, and put thousands more Xos vehicles on the road,” he added.

The company recently relocated its headquarters from North Hollywood to Atwater Village where it has three times the space for assembling batteries used on its trucks, Sordoni said in an email to the Business Journal.

The company will keep its North Hollywood office “but will probably move out completely over the course of the year,” Sordoni wrote in the email.

The boards of directors at both Xos and NextGen have unanimously approved the proposed business combination.The combined company will receive $575 million of gross proceeds, assuming no redemptions, including a $220 million oversubscribed and fully committed common stock PIPE (private investment in public equity) at $10 a share anchored by Janus Henderson Investors, as well as a consortium of truck dealers led by Thompson Truck Centers.

A partnership between Xos and Thompson was announced on Feb. 11. The deal calls for an initial order of 100 trucks, with the mutual goal to order up to 1,000 trucks over the next three years. Thompson Truck is a subsidiary of Thompson Machinery in Nashville, Tenn.