Zeekr's public life cut short as parent company Geely takes it private

In the fast-paced world of electric cars, business moves also sometimes happen at lightning speed. For the premium electric vehicle brand Zeekr, the time in the public market spotlight proved remarkably short. Zeekr only just had its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2024. Now, in a rapid U-turn, its parent company, the Chinese automotive giant Geely, is taking it private again.

Geely Holding Group announced that its subsidiary, Geely Automobile, has formally signed a merger agreement to buy all the parts of Zeekr it doesn't already own. Currently, Geely holds a 62.8% stake in the EV maker. Once the deal is complete, Zeekr will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Geely Automobile.

This means Zeekr will be removed from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and its shares will no longer be traded by the public. The entire process is expected to be finalized before the end of 2025, just over a year after its grand stock market debut.

For investors who bought into the Zeekr story, Geely is offering a choice. Shareholders can decide how they want to be compensated for their stock. For those holding Zeekr's American Depositary Shares (ADS), which is how many international companies are traded on US exchanges, the options are clear. They can either receive $26.87 in cash for each ADS they own or choose to receive 12.3 Geely Auto shares, which will be delivered in the form of Geely ADSs.

For investors holding the original individual shares, the offer is $2.687 in cash or 1.23 Geely Auto shares. Geely set the price for these consideration shares at $17.15 Hong Kong Dollars, which represented a small premium of about 2.4% over Geely's stock price before the deal was first proposed.

Question is: why would Geely go through the trouble of taking Zeekr public only to pull it back into the family fold so quickly? The answer appears to be about efficiency and long-term strategy. Geely is a massive company that also owns or has stakes in brands like Volvo, Polestar, and Lynk & Co. By bringing Zeekr fully in-house, Geely can better consolidate its resources, especially for its intelligent electric cars.

Chinese media reports suggest that combining the research and development efforts of Zeekr and its sibling brand Lynk & Co has already cut R&D costs by 15%. Fully integrating Zeekr could lead to even greater savings and faster development of shared technologies, like self-driving platforms for its electric cars.

The merger also frees Zeekr from the constant pressure of quarterly earnings reports and the often short-sighted demands of public market investors. Without the need to please Wall Street every three months, Zeekr's leadership can focus entirely on its long-term product roadmap and technological innovation. It allows the brand to play the long game, a luxury that publicly traded companies sometimes can't afford.

Some industry analysts suggested this is a move to save a struggling brand, but the numbers tell a different story. Zeekr is not being taken private because it's failing - quite the opposite.

Its growth has been impressive. In the first three months of 2025, Zeekr Technology, which includes both the Zeekr and Lynk & Co brands, delivered 114,011 vehicles. This was a 21.1% increase compared to the same period last year. The Zeekr brand itself accounted for 41,403 of those deliveries, a jump of 25.2%. This isn't a rescue mission - it's a strategic realignment by a parent company looking to sharpen its competitive edge.

Via