Blank check company Qell Acquisition ($QELLU) is concluding its first week trading on the Nasdaq and will be focusing on companies working in next-generation mobility, transportation, and sustainable industry technology sectors. The company's founder and CEO Barry Engle told Cheddar it can be beneficial for a company to go public via increasingly popular special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC) instead of a traditional IPO or a direct listing.
"In periods of volatility like we're seeing now, a SPAC becomes an excellent alternative. It's a quicker, faster route to market," he said.
Engle stressed the stability that a SPAC provides over other options. "Because of the nature of the SPAC, you're able to agree with the target company in advance what the price is. In contrast with a traditional IPO — where, depending on the day you launch, maybe you get lucky, maybe it's a bad day in the market — all of that uncertainty can be removed with a SPAC."
Now that Qell Acquisition is trading on the public market, it will be able to engage with potential targets. When it comes to businesses in industries such as next-generation mobility and transportation, Engle says his team is looking for, "companies in these spaces that are growing, that have winning technologies, and have the opportunity to take advantage of some of these large secular trends." Engle specifically pointed to a move towards electric vehicles and away from internal combustion engines.
Above all, Engle said that it's about the potential these companies have, both on Wall Street and in their particular sectors. With their technologies "these companies will have the opportunity to grow and post extraordinary growth versus the market and versus other companies."
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