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Horizon Aircraft announces signing of “definitive agreement to go public” via business combination with Nasdaq-listed Pono Capital Three

Ontario-based VTOL com­pa­ny, Hori­zon Air­craft, announced this week a pro­posed busi­ness merg­ing with Spe­cial Pur­pose Acqui­si­tion Com­pa­ny (SPAC) and Nas­daq-list­ed, Pono Cap­i­tal Three, reports a press release. The aim is to change the Pono name to Hori­zon Air­craft Ltd. The SPAC will help pro­mote the expan­sion of Horizon’s busi­ness to bet­ter posi­tion itself as a lead­ing play­er in the e/VTOL indus­try.

Bran­don Robin­son, CEO of Hori­zon Air­craft, com­ment­ed, “Our hybrid elec­tric Cavorite VTOL X7 is based on patent­ed duct­ed fan-in-wing tech­nol­o­gy that allows our air­craft to fly faster, far­ther, and car­ry more pay­load than many of our com­peti­tors.” 

He con­tin­ued, “We have received sig­nif­i­cant inter­est for its use in a broad num­ber of mis­sion spe­cif­ic tasks such as emer­gency med­ical ser­vices, aer­i­al fire­fight­ing, dis­as­ter relief, and var­i­ous mil­i­tary spe­cial oper­a­tions.”

Horizon’s tech­nol­o­gy has already received fund­ing sup­port from the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense as well as var­i­ous Cana­di­an grants, along­side the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment recent­ly pledg­ing USD350 mil­lion to sup­port the country’s sus­tain­able avi­a­tion indus­try.

Bran­don Robin­son

The Cavorite X7 is the next step up from Horizon’s first incar­na­tion, the X5, designed to car­ry one pilot and four pas­sen­gers. The even­tu­al pro­duc­tion air­craft will be capa­ble of short-take off and land­ing, need­ing only “a cou­ple hun­dred feet” of space. It will fea­ture a fan-in-wing design; be able to cruise at 370km/h; with a range of 926km; and a 680kg pay­load capac­i­ty. The craft is designed to recharge its bat­ter­ies mid-flight, allow­ing for quick turn-a-round times.

The com­pa­ny envi­sions that the Cavorite X7 ini­tial­ly will be used for spe­cial mis­sions such as haul­ing car­go, medi­vac oper­a­tions and fire-fight­ing appli­ca­tions, such as guid­ing water bombers to drop loca­tions. Even­tu­al­ly, oper­a­tions could be expand­ed to region­al pas­sen­ger trans­port.

Robin­son told flightglobal.com at the June Paris Air­show, “There is only enough bat­tery pow­er on board to enable the ver­ti­cal take-off, and the rest of the time it is a nor­mal air­plane burn­ing sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel or kerosene jet fuel, which is 20 times more ener­gy-dense than even the best bat­ter­ies.”

Davin Kaza­ma, CEO of Pono, remarked, “Hori­zon Aircraft’s hybrid elec­tric eVTOL flies 98 per­cent of its mis­sion exact­ly like a nor­mal air­craft and can recharge itself dur­ing flight or after its mis­sion. This should sim­pli­fy the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process.” Adding, “We are excit­ed to be part of build­ing a bet­ter future.”

The release explains, “The SPAC val­ues Hori­zon Air­craft at USD96 mil­lion, which is expect­ed to result in a com­bined pro-for­ma equi­ty val­ue of approx­i­mate­ly USD216 mil­lion before expens­es, assum­ing no redemp­tions in the Busi­ness Com­bi­na­tion. A For­ward Pur­chase Agree­ment with Mete­o­ra Cap­i­tal will be utilised in this trans­ac­tion.” 

It con­tin­ues, “The cash pro­ceeds raised in the trans­ac­tion, after any redemp­tions and pay­ment of trans­ac­tion expens­es, are antic­i­pat­ed to be used for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Cavorite X7.”

The boards of direc­tors from both Hori­zon Air­craft and Pono have unan­i­mous­ly approved the busi­ness com­bi­na­tion agree­ment and the pro­posed trans­ac­tions. It is cur­rent­ly expect­ed the trans­ac­tion will close in the fourth quar­ter of 2023 or the first quar­ter of 2024.

There has not been an e/VTOL SPAC for some peri­od of time. Pre­vi­ous exam­ples include Lil­i­um, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Archer and Joby. This form of busi­ness merg­er remains con­tro­ver­sial and is deemed risky for pub­lic share­hold­ers, as their invest­ment does not gen­er­al­ly fair well in the short to medi­um term.  

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.horizonaircraft.com

(Images: Hori­zon Air­craft)

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