Thursday, May 31, 2018

"GM Soars After Soft Bank Invests $2.25BN In Its Driverless-Car Unit"

"Soars" might be a bit much but the stock is up 10.8% on a generally down day.
$41.92+4.09, last.

From ZeroHedge:
Step aside Tesla and Uber: there is a new-selfdriving cool kid in town.

On Thursday morning, tech-investing giant SoftBank Vision Fund, which over the past year has been spending money like the Swiss National Bank buying US stocks on tilt, announced it would will invest $2.25 billion in General Motors Co.’s driverless-car unit valuing it at $11.5 billion, creating a new start in the ongoing fierce battle by tech companies and startups to become the first to commercialize autonomous vehicles.
SoftBank Vision Fund will take a 19.6% stake in GM Cruise Holding
GM said that the fund, an affiliate of Japan’s SoftBank Group, will take a 19.6% stake in GM Cruise Holdings LLC, a newly formed entity primarily made up of Cruise Automation, the driverless-car developer that GM acquired in early 2016 for around $1 billion.

The Vision Fund’s investment will be staggered, coming in two tranches: an initial $900 million payment, and another of $1.35 billion once Cruise’s autonomous vehicles are ready for commercial deployment.

The deal will provide not only a major financial backer - a la what Uber tried to do with Warren Buffett and failed - but will also "afford GM increased flexibility with respect to capital allocation" as it plows more money into developing a network of autonomous ride-share vehicles, targeted for sometime next year, GM said....MORE