Jia Yueting faces obstacles in his ambition: Faraday Future meets challenge in its financing ability

Faraday Future, invested by Jia Yueting, announces to invest USD 1b to build electric auto factory in Nevada. But reports from foreign media claims that Jia Yueting is forced to raise funds by way of stock rights pledge, which has roused doubts of Nevada’s financial minister Schwartz. He needs a more detailed explanation for how Jia Yueting and Faraday will raise funds, or he will not consider the issuing of government bonds.

Stacy Morris, spokesman of Faraday, claims on an e-mail that, his company has taken action to clear Schwartz’s doubts. But considering from “technological factor”, the company can still build a factory without the Nevada government’s bond.

Zheng Xiaoming, person in charge of financing in LETV said, Jia Yueting has invested more than USD 300m personal fund to Faraday. Faraday will announce its first round of external finance in the future several weeks.

Analyzing institutions, including Goldman Sachs, are optimistic about LETV. Data from Bloomberg shows LETV has a Q1 net profit increase of 20%. Z-score model also shows it’s quite impossible that LETV will go bankrupt. But investors don’t seem so. Since its resumption of trading in last month, the share price has dropped for a sixth consecutive day.

Data from the financial report shows that Jia Yueting, together with his family, has pledged 35% of LETV equity shares, valuing at about USD 5b. He also sold some shares in June of last year and invested in LETV, with a total value of RMB 2.5b, to “erase the company’s financial pressure”.