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On May 13, Volvo officially announced that its board of directors had decided to re-evaluate the possibility of IPO, which is expected to be listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange of Sweden later this year. However, the final decision on listing depends on the market environment, and there is no guarantee that the listing will take place.

This is not the first time Volvo has heard the news of IPO. Volvo started the process of listing in 2018, hiring top investment banks including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to coach Volvo. At that time, Geely valued Volvo at $160 to $30 billion, while Volvo was valued at $120 to $18 billion, which was so different that the listing plan had to be terminated.

After the failure of IPO in 2018, Volvo put IPO back on the agenda, but Volvo cautiously added the basis that "there is no guarantee that the listing will take place."

Data show that Volvo was acquired by Ford in 1999. Due to poor follow-up management and other reasons, Geely Holdings Group acquired all shares of Volvo Motor with US $1.8 billion in 2010 and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Geely Holdings.

Ten years after Geely acquired Volvo, both Geely and Volvo have made some achievements. At present, Geely has become the head of domestic independent brands, while Volvo's car sales in the global market are also rising year by year. It can be said that Geely's acquisition of Volvo is a mutually beneficial and win-win performance. Geely achieved rapid improvement in product technology after the acquisition of Volvo, the two brands jointly developed the CMA platform, and launched the Lecker brand to achieve Geely's high-end. Volvo also continues to dig deep into the Chinese market under the leadership of Geely, causing its global sales to rise year after year.

However, after Geely bought Volvo, Volvo remained independent and could not use the technology of the second-tier luxury brand for its own use. As a result, Geely Holdings began planning a merger with Volvo.

On February 10, 2020, Geely announced that its management was in preliminary discussions with the management of Volvo and had discussed the possibility of restructuring through the business merger of the two companies. When the two companies are restructured, they will become a strong global automotive group, achieving synergies between cost structure and technology development to meet future challenges. On the same day, Volvo announced that it was planning to restructure its business with Geely, and that the reorganized assets would be included in Geely's Hong Kong listed company and would consider a future listing in Sweden.

On February 24 this year, Geely Holdings announced the latest merger plan with Volvo Group. Geely Holdings said in the announcement that while maintaining their existing independent company structure and achieving strategic goals, the two sides continue to expand areas of cooperation and deepen cooperation in the new four modernizations of automobiles (electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing). The two sides will no longer seek to be established as a group company. In other words, the Geely Volvo merger has changed from an "asset merger" to a "business merger".

For the purpose of this IPO, it is said publicly that the main purpose is to accelerate the transformation of Volvo cars to electrification and intelligence, consolidate Volvo's position in the luxury car market, and improve the profitability of the company. At present, Volvo is accelerating the electrification transformation after it announced that it would phase out all models with internal combustion engines, including plug-in hybrid cars, by 2030.

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