German electric aircraft company Volocopter has hired Oliver Vogelgesang — who held the role at fellow German electric aircraft startup Lilium until earlier this year — as its new CFO. Volocopter previously flagged it was at risk of insolvency, while Lilium filed for insolvency in October.
Vogelgesang has replaced former CFO Christian Bauer, who Volocopter says will remain as its chief commercial officer.
The struggles of the two companies underscore the difficulty of building capital-intensive deeptech, particularly in a sector with less free-flowing investor cash than a few years ago. Volocopter has raised $770m in total, while Lilium has secured $462m across its lifetime.
Volocopter’s hunt for cash
Volocopter is rumoured to be in advanced talks with China’s Geely, for the conglomerate to take a majority stake in the business.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Geely has discussed taking a majority stake in Volocopter by leading a group of investors injecting fresh capital into the business. The funding round would be about $95m in exchange for roughly 85% ownership, reports suggest. The deal would slash Volocopter’s valuation from a peak of $1.9bn in 2022 to about $110m, sources told Bloomberg.
Volocopter told Bloomberg it could not comment on ongoing discussions.
Volocopter reportedly secured an undisclosed amount of funding from investors in June just weeks after its CEO Dirk Hoke had raised the prospect of insolvency for the startup. The company had previously appealed to the German federal government for state support but has so far not secured any assistance.
On stage at Sifted Summit in September, Bauer said companies in the sector have had a few difficult years with a much smaller pot of capital to share than in 2021.
“After the hype in 2021, where €10bn was floating into the industry, then it went down to €1bn per year. There are now a lot of companies out there raising and fighting [to survive]. So everybody in the world is now fighting for this €1bn,” he said.
Lilium’s insolvency
Lilium filed for insolvency after failing to raise capital. The company had hoped for an injection of capital from the German government, which didn’t come.
In its Q1 2024 shareholder letter, Lilium stated it “expected” to receive a €100m loan guarantee from the German federal government and the state of Bavaria and that the due diligence process, which was already underway, would take just six to eight weeks.
Talks to secure a loan fell through in mid-October and Lilium filed for insolvency on October 24th. Upon the news, Lilium’s stock price fell 61%.
While Lilium is in a tight spot financially, the company could survive if a buyer or investor is found by the end of the year. Tax consulting and auditing firm KPMG was recently commissioned to find a rescuer.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/volocopter-cfo-lilium-news/
