Atlis Motor Vehicles, a Mesa startup building an all-electric pickup, said Wednesday that it plans to become a publicly traded company later this year.
Atlis said it expects to start trading on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “AMV” as soon as this summer. The company had yet to file its initial registration and disclosure paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission as of Wednesday morning.
To date Atlis has primarily supported its operations through crowdfunding drives, which have raised tens of millions of dollars from thousands of would-be customers. Atlis has been offering its shares at $15.88 each during its most recent Regulation A-plus crowdfunding campaign.
Production of Atlis’s flagship XT pickup is now expected to begin in 2024. Executives previously told the Business Journal last September that an initial batch of 150 trucks would be out for pilot testing in 2022 and that the company was expected to be profitable in 2022.
“From inception, we’ve had an unwavering commitment to produce an electric truck that does not comprise performance or durability. By going public, we will unlock the capital needed to succeed,” Atlis founder and CEO Mark Hanchett said in a statement.
“This new funding will allow us to continue to scale operations to produce state-of-the-art batteries, platforms and pickups needed to advance the work truck market. I’d like to acknowledge and thank our 20,000+ investors that have backed our efforts over the years; this is a milestone moment for them as well,” he said.
Atlis CEO previously worked at Axon
Hanchett founded Atlis in 2016 after working as an executive at Axon Enterprise Inc. (Nasdaq: AXON) in Scottsdale. The company is less focused on selling vehicles to everyday drivers and more positioning its XT pickup as a customizable work vehicle for use at construction sites, out on farms and in other rugged settings.
The vision for Atlis extends beyond just building trucks too; the company is also building its own batteries and electric motors. Additionally, Atlis intends to sell its electric chassis, often called a skateboard, so other users can build their own vehicles on the XP platform.
The company now employs more than 80 people, up from 42 back in September.
If Atlis does succeed in going public, it would join several other early-stage EV startups that turned to the public market for financing in recent years. Phoenix-based Nikola Corp. went public in the summer of 2020, and more recently the Lucid Group and fellow EV pickup truck makers Rivian and Lordstown Motors followed suit.
These other EV makers raised billions in their IPOs, but all except for Lucid were trading below their IPO share prices at market close on Tuesday.
