What’s new: Chinese battery-maker Gotion High-tech Co. Ltd. (002074.SZ) has received a wag of the finger from the country’s securities regulator for taking too long to disclose information about a factory it plans to build in the U.S.
The Shenzhen-listed company will suffer no penalty beyond a black mark on its corporate compliance record, according to a Wednesday notice by the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s (CSRC) Anhui province branch.
The regulator’s issues stemmed from a deal that Gotion made to receive a local incentive package as part of its plans to build an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in the U.S. state of Illinois. The company signed the deal on Sept. 7, but violated Chinese disclosure rules when it didn’t disclose relevant information on the deal until Oct. 12, according to the notice.
The CSRC’s notice didn’t specify what the relevant information was.
The background: The regulatory black eye comes at a time when Gotion is pushing deeper into overseas markets. The company aims to have one-third of its 300 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of planned production capacity outside of China by 2025.
On Thursday, the Volkswagen AG-backed firm got an EV battery pack factory it built with a local partner up and running in Thailand. In September, Gotion started production at its first European factory in Germany.
Gotion was the world’s eighth-largest EV battery-maker by installed capacity in the first 10 months of 2023. Still, its 2.4% market share left it far behind industry leader Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (300750.SZ), which controlled 36.9% of the global market, according to South Korea-based SNE Research.
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Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
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