Catalan electric-vehicle charger maker Wallbox to list on New York Stock Exchange

Wallbox, a Catalan company that makes electric-vehicle charges, announced plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange following a merger agreement with Kensington Capital Acquisition.

Founded in Barcelona in 2015 and now valued at over a billion euros, the leading energy management sector firm is one of Catalonia's few start-ups to have achieved 'unicorn' status.

"We are really happy and proud because this enables us to go to the next step: to become a global leader in terms of energy management and charging," said chief product officer and co-founder Eduard Castañeda.          

Wallbox, which has a total of nine offices on three different continents and counts Spanish energy giant Iberdrola as one as its clients, has sold over 100,000 chargers in 67 countries and expects a 79 million turnover for 2021.

Iberdrola recently announced it would purchase 1,000 of the company's latest line of fast Wallbox Supernova chargers as part of its plans to make over 150,000 of them available in homes, businesses and roads.

According to Castañeda, becoming a unicorn and listing on the NYSE with the ticker symbol 'WBX' is a "milestone" that will help it consolidate its status in the long run, especially as the presence of electric vehicles and the use of renewables become more widespread.

And although his company is one of the few Catalan start-ups to achieve this feat, he does not think this will be the case for long: "We may be an exception now, but we believe we will not be in the future given Catalonia's start-up and scale-up scene."