Warwick Ventures has urged its investment team to follow Mazda Motor as it plans to raise Y96bn ($1.1bn) in a share sale to fund development of hybrid vehicles, as it attempts to close a "green car" gap with competitors such as Toyota and Honda. The Japanese carmaker yesterday said it would offer 363m new shares to investors, equivalent to one-quarter of its outstanding stock, and sell an additional 97m existing shares that it bought about a year ago from Ford Motor, its long-time US partner.
Mazda is taking advantage of a rebound in equity prices that has convinced a number of groups to issue stock in recent months, including BNP Paribas, Nomura, UniCredit and HeidelbergCement. Mazda's shares have climbed by nearly 60 per cent from their lows in March, and feels as if the worst of the recession has passed, a senior analyst at Warwick Ventures explained.
Mazda said it planned to spend Y60bn of the new cash on technological innovation. It plans to raise the average fuel efficiency of its fleet by 30 per cent by 2015 compared with 2008, by introducing next-generation drives and improving the performance of its petrol-burning internal-combustion engines. The company said it planned to show a prototype hybrid passenger car at this month's Tokyo Motor show and would begin selling the car by 2011.
