Lilium: “Just When You Think It’s All Over…”

Ger­man news web­site, electrive.com, has been whet­ting the appetite of the eVTOL Indus­try with a “Will they or won’t they?” sto­ry con­cern­ing the defunct com­pa­ny, Lil­i­um, who went into its sec­ond file for insol­ven­cy back in Feb­ru­ary. 

Like a clas­sic ‘Phoenix from the Ash­es’ tale, the for­mer elec­tric air taxi com­pa­ny, mim­ic­k­ing the res­ur­rec­tion of Lazarus, may rise again.

This poten­tial mir­a­cle began on August 8th, when electrive.com broke the news that the­DutchAm­bi­tiou­sAir­Mo­bil­i­ty­Group (AAMG) and part­ners were show­ing inter­est in con­tin­u­ing the Lil­i­um air­craft pro­gram “by offer­ing to acquire the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty includ­ing key assets and secur­ing tech­ni­cal exper­tise as well as the staff.”

The arti­cle went on, “Lilium’s air­craft plat­form is to be con­tin­u­al­ly devel­oped and cer­ti­fied, as well as set­ting up a sup­ply chain to build the air­craft in Europe, should the com­pa­ny accept the deal.”

Last Minute Res­cue: “New Year Cheer for Lil­i­um as eVTOL Com­pa­ny Finds Investor”

Lil­i­um: “A Sad Sad Sit­u­a­tion…”

Before the insol­ven­cy pro­ceed­ings, AAMG had ordered 16 Lil­i­um Jets. The com­pa­ny claimed it had cap­i­tal of over EUR250 mil­lion at its dis­pos­al for this pur­pose. There was also men­tion of access to a fur­ther EUR500 mil­lion for the expan­sion of oper­a­tions in Europe and beyond.

This appeared to be a seri­ous busi­ness offer.

Dr Robert Kamp, CEO & Senior Part­ner of AAMG, told elec­trive, “We are con­vinced that what has been devel­oped here in Bavaria is ground­break­ing and both tech­ni­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble. The Lil­i­um plat­form is the result of years of endeav­our by some of the most tal­ent­ed engi­neers in the world. We are excit­ed about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take this plat­form for­ward, invest in and realise its full poten­tial.”

So far so good.

Three days lat­er, the web­site announced a damp­en­er to the news, ful­ly expect­ed with such a sto­ry.

The ‘cheap­skate AAMG’ was only will­ing to pay EUR20 mil­lion for Lil­i­um, a com­pa­ny once val­ued at bil­lions. A shroud of mys­tery had also descend­ed. There’d been no state­ment from Lilum or the insol­ven­cy admin­is­tra­tor about the com­pa­ny’s inter­est. This is unusu­al in such sit­u­a­tions after a dec­la­ra­tion of intent has occurred.

For such a pal­try sum, it remained unclear whether the offer was even being tak­en seri­ous­ly.

The Ger­man busi­ness pub­li­ca­tion, Wirtschaftswoche, then wad­ed in con­firm­ing that a pur­chase agree­ment had not yet been con­clud­ed, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion obtained by the mag­a­zine from sources close to the com­pa­ny. There­fore, no mon­ey had been trans­ferred and the insol­ven­cy admin­is­tra­tors had yet to give their approval.

Those sup­port­ing the Euro offer point­ed out that a Lil­i­um buy­er would have to start from scratch and need to invest heav­i­ly to get oper­a­tions up and run­ning again for an air­craft with a unique and high­ly con­tro­ver­sial pow­er­plant sys­tem con­sist­ing of 36 elec­tric jet engines inte­grat­ed into the wings and canards.

Mean­while, Gründerszene/Business Insid­er, a lead­ing plat­form for the Ger­man start­up econ­o­my, added fur­ther infor­ma­tion to the mix about who was behind this poten­tial takeover com­pa­ny. 

It is a joint ven­ture between Lux­Avi­a­tion (a pri­vate air­craft oper­a­tor from Lux­em­bourg), Sig­ma Air Mobil­i­ty (a sub­sidiary of Lux­a­va­tion, focused on elec­tric and sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty solu­tions of the future) and the Ambi­tious Group, an inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment con­sul­tan­cy head­quar­tered in Ams­ter­dam. AAMG also says it has joined forces with the Japan­ese com­pa­ny, Air­Mo­bil­i­ty, to tap into mar­kets in the Asia-Pacif­ic region.

https://sigmaairmobility.com

https://airmobility.co.jp

So we come to last Fri­day (August 15th).

AAMG are becom­ing seri­ous after for­mal­ly apply­ing for a pur­chase agree­ment, under the con­di­tions pre­vi­ous­ly announced. The EUR20 mil­lion offer sounds incred­i­bly cheap, but beg­gars can’t be choosers. The ques­tion being: is the insol­ven­cy admin­is­tra­tor inter­est­ed? A spokesper­son com­ment­ed that while talks are under­way, con­di­tions for a com­plete sale have not been met… yet.

A major con­cern is a lack of proof for the nec­es­sary financ­ing. It is once bit­ten twice shy for Lil­i­um after the star­tup’s sec­ond insol­ven­cy occurred because the investors failed to main­tain their finan­cial oblig­a­tions.

The admin­is­tra­tor stat­ed, “It is cru­cial we achieve the best pos­si­ble sales pro­ceeds in the inter­ests of the cred­i­tors. That is our task.”

Dr Kamp respond­ed, “By pro­vid­ing a draft asset pur­chase agree­ment to a qual­i­fied and com­mit­ted poten­tial buy­er does not involve any costs or risks for the insol­ven­cy admin­is­tra­tors and is a nec­es­sary step to enable progress. Our goal is to pro­tect the val­ue already cre­at­ed, pre­serve first-class engi­neer­ing jobs and ensure the con­tin­u­a­tion of this impor­tant Euro­pean aero­space pro­gramme.”

Cer­tain­ly, if AAMG were to raise their offer, there is a good chance Lil­i­um may rise from the dead.

News Sources

https://www.electrive.com/

https://www.wiwo.de

handelsblatt.com

(Top image: Lil­i­um Jet)

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