With each Zeekr filing, China’s Geely Auto hopes to remove the luxurious EV unit Zeekr from the New York Stock Exchange, a year after the company’s debut.
As the Trump administration explores kicking Chinese companies from the US stock exchange, the take-private offer is part of a broader trade war, including what has become a tariff quagmire between the US and China.
On Tuesday, Geely offered to pay $25.66 per Zeekr American Depository Receiden (ADS), or $2.566 per regular share. Advertising holders may also receive 12.3 new Geely shares issued for each ad.
Apart from robbing potential geopolitical awkwardness, Geely can benefit a lot from not losing Zeekr privately and not so much. Geely already owns 65.7% of Zeekr through founder Li Shufu. That means Geely only needs to pay around $2.2 billion to get the rest. At that price, Geely was able to help Zeekr absorb the market blows that come with being an EV startup in a competitive market and protect its investments.
Zeekr has not yet reported first quarter results, but in the first four months of 2025, it provided a total of 125,250 vehicles to two brands (Zeekr and Lynk & Co).
Zeekr is working with self-driving car company Waymo to build a dedicated robotics dedicated to large-scale deployments in the US. Also, if Geely makes the company private, if Waymo shared plans to share plans to integrate self-driving facilities into Zeekr facilities, it has not confirmed whether that will affect the work relationship.