Jonas Fröberg: The best thing that can happen to Volvo Cars, the Swedish newspaper svenska Dagbladet

Volvo Cars is in good shape. But operating in an automotive industry that is undergoing a complete metamorphosis with gigantic investments and a business model that in a few years be challenged in the basis. Precisely why the need for a listing – now.

Photo: Bjorn Lindgren/TT

For close to 90 years ago, there was a västsvensk dream. Swedish high-technology would hit the world with amazement – and put the world on wheels. We got kutryggiga PV-cars, scenic Amazons and square truliga 245:or that sounded like a rutting höfläkt – but beloved in the world’s intellectual elite. Volvo created a part of our image of sweden, in which a long time was Sweden’s largest company.

But now the Swedish institutions ‘ 5-miljardersinvestering to throw money at an outdated Swedish bildröm – in a world where mobility does not have to mean cars. Let us come back to it and say:

An ipo is the best thing that can happen to Volvo Cars. From several aspects:

Volvo Cars is in good shape. Thanks to the Geely purchase of 2010 was in big trouble up factories and sales in China. Now is the harvest time of harvest, in the middle of a modelloffensiv launched in 2014 with big suven XC90 – the first model with the brand new bilplattform and family. Then came the Volvo S – V90 – which all received great reviews, sold well, and raised the Volvo against the lyxmärke you so long wanted to be, but never mäktat with.

The latest quarter of Cars and a profit margin of 6 per cent, almost in the class with competitors BMW and Daimler – even if foreign exchange gains were a part of it.

more: In Geneva launched about three months Volvo’s most important car in terms of both volume and earnings: mellansuven the XC60. Flops put it all on the line. Then, the small XC40 – the first car on a new platform developed in Gothenburg in cooperation with its ‘ sister brand Geely. This parts Volvo costs which then can be turned out in practice twice as many cars from Geelykoncernen.

building a factory in the united states –which reduces the vulnerability of the dollar exchange rate, have come quite far in elbilsutveckling (around 2019, two electric cars to be launched) has new partnerships with Autoliv, and the Uber if the self-driven cars, and has dared to bring in people from the united states’s IT sector in the board of directors and have a well-functioning management.

Volvo Cars is a välekiperad bride. Therefore, it is the right time to get the investors – in the face of an approaching storm.

the Automotive industry face – a metamorphosis – and the gigantic investments: rural electrification, self-driven cars, connected cars and new mobility services. Everything should be developed at the same time as the ones from the global techsektorn furiously bang on the door, to the industry and all the smaller deals profitable to metal drawers on wheels – and more and more about big data – and what we vaguely refer to as mobility services.

And where no one really knows how the business model looks like in a few years. This is also why bilbolagen low-valued.

It is therefore börsintroduceringen is so necessary. In order to create financial flexibility to carve out a new Volvo to assert themselves in a new world with completely cut-throat competition.

things were Different in 2010: Volvo Cars was åderlåtet, verging on the plundered without new modellplattform or new family – owned by a Ford on the brink of ruin. The Volvo required a huge investment, at a time when the automobile sector reached a critical stage. Then step Volvo’s old personbilschef Hans-Olov Olsson back and put everything on one card:

A risbonde from China, philosophical bondslug.

The indulgent smiles were many, even of me.

Li Shufu could not even afford to buy the entire Volvo for reapriset 13 billion, but 49 per cent were purchased by the two regional investerarbolag, controlled by the local kommunistpampar: A up in Daqing in northern China and one in a suburb of Shanghai.

I and the photographer Magnus Neideman went up to Daqing, a oljestad gone to the dogs up there on the tundra, before Volvo’s own management had there in February 2011. There we met the local kommunistpampen. Over a long dinner, he told me, which took 37 per cent of Volvo Cars that he wanted to have a factory and make the cheap volvo cars, in direct contradiction to the management directive in Gothenburg, at the same time as Maria Carey sang on a tv screen behind us.

Gulp. The two funds were – infinite to put it mildly – a source of uncertainty.

Now is the owners are away. The sale has been made in the quiet. And was completely necessary for the AMF, the AP1 and Folksam would go in and for a listing at all will be possible.

However, the automobile sector is sensitive and will not Volvo, case with note in the time window can be closed rapidly. But if it becomes a reality: Count now that it is done within a year – and that Li Shufu retains the power.

Throws when one of our Swedish investors our pension on an outdated american bildröm? No, if Volvo’s management takes care of the cards right, these 5 billion will be the starting point for a new dream – a trip will be both wave and uncertain.