Hyliion Struggles In First Day Of Post-SPAC Merger Trading

The merger between Tortoise Acquisition Corp SHLL and Hyliion was approved by shareholders earlier this week. Shares began trading as Hyliion HYLN on Friday.

What’s Next: Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy was interviewed on FreightWaves and he called being publicly listed “surreal.”

When asked about the differences between Hyliion versus Nikola Corporation NKLA and Tesla Inc TSLA, Healy said Hyliion helps people get the benefits of an electric vehicle without some of the negatives.

“What works in the passenger car space doesn’t necessarily work in the long-haul trucking space,” Healy said.

Healy emphasized his company is using existing infrastructure of natural gas stations instead of building out infrastructure. The cost to build out hydrogen fueling stations could cost $12 billion to hit the 700 stations in place already for natural gas.

“What we’re doing is we’re actually leveraging natural gas and using that to produce electricity locally on the truck to actually charge the batteries up,” Healy told Benzinga's PreMarketPrep in July.

Healy said it “all comes down to cost, emissions and infrastructure.” Hyliion’s technology can produce net negative emissions, which could help a company offset some of its manufacturing emissions.

Hyliion has estimated it will hit revenue of $344 million in 2022 and hit over $1 billion in 2023.

What’s Next For Tortoise Acquisition: The company behind this deal will turn its attention to Tortoise Acquisition Corp II SNPR, its new SPAC that raised $300 million.

Price Action: Shares of Hyliion traded down 11% to $40.08. Shares traded between $38.02 and $44.64 on Friday.

Disclosure: The author has a long position in HYLN.