PARIS (Reuters) – Renault shares were flat on Tuesday the day after the surprise announcement of the cancellation of the IPO of the group’s electrical and software nugget, Ampère, with investors hesitant about its implications for ambitions electrical from the manufacturer.

On the Paris Stock Exchange, around 10:00 GMT, Renault shares are stable (+0.04%) at 34.32 euros, after having climbed up to more than 5% in the first exchanges, the market initially welcoming the abandonment of a project that has become risky in an uncertain context for the sales and valuations of electric vehicle players.

Renault announced the evening before that it had decided to cancel the IPO of Ampère, planned for the first half of the year, because the market conditions were not met and because it had sufficient cash to finance the activity. on its own resources.

“While this announcement may be seen as negative for Renault as it will raise legitimate questions about its electric vehicle strategy and dynamics, it should not come as a complete surprise,” Berenberg analysts wrote in a statement. note.

“This is due to the increasingly challenging electric vehicle market, with strong price and product competition, fading growth and demand dynamics for electric vehicles, and widespread uncertainties around subsidies (. ..) which do not contribute to fueling investors’ appetite for the activities of ‘pure players’ in the electric sector.

Last fall, several analysts cast doubt on Renault’s ability to obtain a valuation of up to ten billion euros for Ampère. The general director of Renault, Luca de Meo, then responded several times that the objective was still an IPO, but not at any price.

A precursor with Nissan of electric vehicles the previous decade, Renault has since been supplanted by newcomers, pure players in battery vehicles such as Tesla or Chinese brands.

The creation of Ampère last fall should help the group get back into the race by giving better visibility to its electrical and software activities, compared to its historical assets in thermal engines. The IPO was intended to accelerate the development of the entity without drawing on Renault Group’s resources.

“An organic solution avoids distracting management at a critical moment for the industry,” believes Jefferies for its part, for whom the current valuations of pure electric players made an IPO unattractive.

Even Tesla, a key player in the market, closed Monday at around $190, far from its 2023 highs of nearly $300 reached last July.

“We were skeptical about this potential IPO very early on and we view this decision as positive, but we understand that the timing of the decision may leave many industry observers perplexed,” writes Kepler.

Renault will present its new Renault 5 at the end of February at the Geneva auto show, an electric model at the heart of Ampère’s strategy and crucial for the relaunch of the group’s battery car sales.

The brand will also unveil another flagship project, the new electric Twingo, a concept of which was revealed at the Ampère investor day on November 15.

(Gilles Guillaume and Claude Chendjou, edited by Kate Entringer and Blandine Hénault)

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