Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

Shares in China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker, surged as much as 18% on its first day of trading in Hong Kong, shrugging off geopolitical uncertainties.

On Tuesday, CATL shares opened at 296 Hong Kong dollars ($37.8), well above the subscription price of 263 Hong Kong dollars ($33.6) in a stock listing that raised $4.6 billion last week. Its shares rose to as much as 311 Hong Kong dollars during the trading day, according to Refinitiv data.

The listing, the world’s largest so far this year, is the latest example of how Chinese companies are pressing ahead with their global expansion plans despite ongoing trade tension with the US. In January, CATL was added to a Pentagon blacklist of companies that it alleges work with China’s military, although it has denied such links.

Last month, the House Select Committee on China demanded that US investment banks JPMorgan and Bank of America withdraw from underwriting CATL’s Hong Kong listing. Both stuck with the deal.

“The Hong Kong stock listing signifies our deeper integration into the global capital markets,” Robin Zeng, the company’s founder and chairman, said at a listing ceremony at the Hong Kong stock exchange. “CATL is not just a battery component manufacturer, but also a provider of system-level solutions, and is more committed to becoming a zero-carbon technology company.”

The firm supplies major EV makers – including Volkswagen, Stellantis and BMW – and its overseas sales accounted for over 30% of its revenue last year, according to a May 12 stock exchange filing.

The National Business Daily, a Chinese state-run newspaper, said the listing would provide a necessary capital boost for CATL’s international expansion as it has been constrained by limited foreign currency reserves and rising geopolitical risks.

The company’s Hong Kong listing will not only build up its foreign currency reserves, providing ample “ammunition” to support its overseas projects, but also leverage international capital to enhance its ability to integrate cross-border resources, the paper quoted an unnamed CATL representative as saying.

CATL’s Hong Kong debut came weeks after it unveiled an EV battery that boasts a range of 320 miles on a five-minute charge, compared to Tesla-rival BYD’s technology which provides 250 miles in range at a similar charge time.

CATL held the title of the world’s largest electric battery supplier for the eighth year in 2024, holding 38% of the global market, according to SNE Research, a market research and consultancy firm. By late last year, its batteries were used in one out of every three EVs worldwide, powering about 17 million vehicles, according to the May filing.

This is the second listing for the company based in the city of Ningde in southeast China’s Fujian province. In 2022, it raised $6.7 billion in a Shenzhen IPO.

CATL first announced its intention to list in Hong Kong last December, as part of a plan to grow the company’s global footprint in places such as Europe, with the expansion of its facilities in Hungary.

As of last year, CATL operates 13 battery factories around the world, including in China, Germany and Hungary, according to its filing. It is also making progress on a joint venture in Spain with Stellantis, the owner of Fiat and Chrysler, to build a battery plant, and a separate battery-related project in Indonesia.

For now, even though US and China have temporarily rolled back their triple-digit tariffs, President Donald Trump’s tariffs on vehicles and car parts have remained. In response to the levies, CATL said in the filing that it cannot predict future tariff policies or the potential impact from them. Its revenue from products directly exported from China to the US has been relatively small in recent years.

“Tariff policies are still evolving rapidly. At this stage, it is difficult to accurately assess their impact on our business. We will closely monitor the developments,” the company said in the May 12 filing.