Lilium's continued existence depends on the Spac IPO

The air taxi start-up has to adapt its balance sheet to international IFRS rules. In doing so, it adds an addendum: The continued existence is secured until 2022 only if the IPO works in the third quarter. There are also corrections to the start-up loss.

Lilium is aiming to go public via Spac. Now it becomes clear how important this step is for the flight taxi start-up: After a correction in the company's balance sheet for 2019, the condition for Lilium to continue to exist and be financed beyond December 2022 is an IPO in the third quarter of this year. Michael Andersen, the startup's deputy chief financial officer, confirmed this to the World on Sunday: "If the IPO works out, this note will be void."

Lilium plans its IPO via Spac Quell Aquisition, which is already listed on the US stock exchange. In the course of this, the start-up had to adjust its balance sheet to the international IFRS rules. This led to the fact that, in addition to the note on the continued existence, the start-up loss for 2019 had to be corrected from 42.8 million euros to 75.4 million euros. As the start-up told Welt am Sonntag, it became clear through this process that there was less room for manoeuvre in two balance sheet items.

Founded six years ago, Lilium recently announced ambitious plans: by 2024, the start-up wants to make its flying taxis commercially viable, with 90 models to be produced. Since a financing round in 2020 for 35 million euros, Lilium has a valuation in the billions, so it belongs to the ranks of German unicorns.