Freer tops promise to buy shares after prices collapse by 90 per cent

There is a crisis facing battery company Freyr after a quarterly report last week that included a lot of bad news. In the next two days, the company’s market value fell by more than half on the New York Stock Exchange.

Now, two of the company’s most important leaders, Chairman and Co-Founder Tom Einar Jensen and Managing Director Berger Steen, have written a letter to shareholders saying they will continue to work to create value for owners, providing a status update on the strategy and business – and promising that parts of management and the board should They buy stock to prove their confidence in the company.

“We are as confident as we have ever been in our ability to transform Freyr into a diversified, global manufacturer of clean battery solutions. Today we demonstrate that confidence, and our commitment to you, by the fact that certain members of our management and Board of Directors have informed us of their intention to purchase shares in our company in the market.” Open,” the two wrote in the letter Posted on the Freer website.

They added that details of the purchase of shares will be provided in stock exchange announcements. DN Freyr asked who would buy the shares, and for how much, and was told the company would get back with an answer.

Freyr shares hit an all-time low of $1.50 per share, after falling 55 percent on Thursday and Friday. Since peaking exactly a year ago, the stock has fallen more than 90 percent.

Disaster report

Freyr published its quarterly report Thursday morning US time. Probably most of the attention in Norway has been on the news that the large plant in Mo i Rana has been suspended because the company believes that the framework conditions are not good enough compared to the support plans in the USA. But the company’s pilot plant in Meaux, which will prove the technology works commercially, has also been postponed, funding for the US project that was set to take priority has been postponed, and the company sees itself having to halve its cash use next year and lay off parts of the workforce.

In the letter, Jensen and Stein summarize the company’s position today in developing strategy. Both summits confirm that the technology is from 24M Technologies Inc. It works, and indicates that Kyocera has had commercial production with the same technology since 2019.

They also encourage shareholders to attend the extraordinary general meeting on December 15, where they will vote on the company’s move from Luxembourg to the USA.

The process was announced earlier this year. Freer has announced plans to build giant factories in both Norway and the USA, but in the past few years he has said that a huge green support package and a favorable IRA make betting on the USA more profitable.

The company has received public support in Norway and Europe as well, but nowhere near what it requested. On Thursday, DN wrote about a request Freer sent to the Norwegian government in March for a support package totaling about ten billion kroner, most of which are loans and guarantees. Freer has also received criticism for senior management and board compensation, which is seen in relation to the company’s need for support.(conditions)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using links that lead directly to our pages. No copying or other use of all or part of the Content may be permitted except with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms see here.