LG Energy Solutions On Track To Overtake CATL With LFP Batteries Incoming

LG Energy Solutions (LGES) expects that it will overtake Chinese CATL as the world's biggest supplier of batteries. Kaon Young-Soo, the CEO of LGES revealed that it will become the global number in 2022 thanks to its more diversified business geographically, a high order of backlog which is worth $217 billion, and overall superior intellectual properties. 

"We overwhelm the competitor in IPs, and we have more diverse clients in the U.S. and Europe, and production bases there to supply our products to those clients, which CATL doesn't have. I believe that the backdrop to CATL's growth is that Chinese automakers have preferred locally produced batteries or the policy to use them. Since we have more orders, we predict that we will be higher than CATL in terms of market share in the future," said Kwon Young-soo, LGSE CEO. 

LG Energy Solutions is one of the biggest battery players in the world 

LGES is also expected to reveal its share price and the company is expected to have a market cap of around $58.5 billion after its IPO is done. More than 80 percent of LGES will be owned by LG Chem.  It is also expected that it will raise another $10.6 billion out of which $7.4 billion will be spent on new manufacturing capacity. It is building new facilities in Michigan in the US, and also one in the Wroclaw plant in Poland. There may also be a new gigafactory that it is planning for the European market. 

It revealed that its LFP batteries are in development - and these will be developed just not for electric vehicles but also for energy storage systems. LFP chemistry is cheaper and safer but perhaps not as efficient. It mixes nickel, cobalt, manganese, and aluminum. 

"We plan to actively use this material. Since we've developed it before, we will apply it to the ESS (energy storage system) and then to electric vehicles in the future," revealed the CEO whilst also stating that the company had more than double-digit profit margins and upwards of 25 percent year on year growth.