① After two consecutive days of surging, Lilium's Market Cap is still just a fraction of its former glory; ② After securing new investments to restart Operations, the company still needs to address the commercialization of its unique technological path, while the current competition is becoming increasingly intense.
On December 27, the Financial Associated Press (Editor: Shi Zhengcheng) reported that in Thursday's US stock market, Drone concept stocks $Lilium (LILMF.US)$ once again saw a surge in three-digit percentage gains. Following a previous trading day’s increase of 268.39%, Thursday's intraday gains once exceeded 100%, closing up 61.59%, with a cumulative increase of nearly 500% over two days.
Even with such exaggerated increases for two consecutive days, the company's stock price did not reach 0.3 USD, and the Market Cap just surpassed 1 billion RMB, which is enough to demonstrate the downfall of this once star enterprise.
Several Drone concept stocks also experienced unusual movements in Thursday's US stock market. As of the time of writing, $Palladyne AI (PDYN.US)$gains exceeded 47%, $Vertical Aerospace (EVTL.US)$ Increased by over 30%.
In terms of news, Palladyne AI recently announced that its innovative Palladyne Pilot AI Software platform has successfully integrated recognition, sorting, and automatic tracking features for third-party Drones. Vertical Aerospace just announced new investment this week.
What has happened?
Searching through past reports, we began to pay attention to the so-called low-altitude economic Concept as early as 2020 — at that time, the more mainstream term was "flying taxi."
As one of the earliest internet celebrity enterprises of this Concept, Lilium was also referred to as the "Tesla of the flying car industry," partly because Baillie Gifford, a major shareholder of Tesla, is a critical investor in this company. Meanwhile, Chinese investors' awareness of this company is also related to Tencent's involvement in multiple rounds of financing, with Statistics indicating that Tencent invested nearly 4 billion RMB.
Of course, early investors have witnessed glorious moments with the company - Lilium went public in the U.S. market through a "reverse merger" on September 15, 2021, with a peak Market Cap of over 7 billion USD, which was almost close to 47 billion RMB at the time's Exchange Rates.
Having gained early fame and completed the listing, the most critical issue - the progress of commercialized flying vehicles has always been challenging.
As one of the first-generation "flying taxi" companies, Lilium has not completed manned flight tests even after burning through the tens of billions in its account. At the same time, the technical routes like "electric ducted fans" that the company insists on differ from those of the current leaders in the "low-altitude economy", with huge uncertainties in endurance, cost, and commercialization prospects.
With the German government refusing to provide financing guarantees for Lilium this year, the company announced its entry into bankruptcy proceedings at the end of October. Following that, Lilium was quickly delisted from the Exchange and retreated to the mixed market of penny stocks for Trade.
A turning point suddenly appeared.
Interestingly, just four days after Lilium had ended its 10-year operation and laid off about 1000 employees on December 20, the company announced that it had found new investors.
(Source: Company official website)
The company announced that it had signed an asset purchase agreement with a company established by a group of "experienced investors from Europe and North America", and the funds obtained would enable its subsidiary to restart Business operation, but the parent company Lilium N.V. would not receive any money.
The announcement states that the Trade is expected to be completed in January 2025, at which point previously laid-off employees will be rehired. The announcement did not clarify the amount involved in the Trade or how many employees will be rehired.
The greater challenge lies in the fact that while hundreds of "low-altitude economy" companies worldwide are beginning to obtain licenses and exploring the "final step" toward commercialization, Lilium still needs to address concerns about "technical feasibility" and complete the critical first manned test flight - these are all issues that Lilium's new investors need to consider.
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编辑/jayden
