Beyond Financing: Pontos’ Partnership with IONCOR

When I joined Pontos in 2020, one of the first assignments was to finalize negotiations of a commitment related to Valmet Automotive. Later that spring, when COVID hit automotive production, we at Pontos worked closely together with the management to orchestrate a multi-party financing process into successful fruition. The ensuing years saw iterations of potential financing strategies for Valmet Automotive, including a potential listing on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. During these years, Pontos stood behind the company, providing support to strategic path that was being explored.

Over this period, the battery business of Valmet Automotive grew rapidly. What began as an electric vehicle systems division, operating from a single plant, steadily blossomed into a multi-location battery business. The division grew to employ over a thousand people, encompassing testing and engineering in addition to pure manufacturing. Over time, the division transformed into the biggest strategic driver of the company. This driver was later to come IONCOR.

My personal contribution to the board during these transformative years centered on my financing expertise, particularly in navigating the complex financing processes. While company management undertakes the operational heavy lifting – conducting countless management presentations – strategic financing transactions are ultimately an owner-driven decisions. In this crucial area Pontos played a significant role by helping to shape the financial strategy for IONCOR. For this reason, I feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in seeing IONCOR’s financing successfully completed, with Pontos continuing to participate in the company’s exciting growth story as a minority owner.

With this financial backing IONCOR is now able to realize its growth plan for its own battery product, the Energy Pack, currently in testing phase. While automotive continues to play a role in IONCOR’s strategy, the vision for the company extends far beyond that. The plan is to venture into off-road vehicles and explore use cases even completely outside the four-wheel industry.

For anyone who believes Finland might have lost its edge as a prime engineering hub, I urge you to visit IONCOR’s Salo plant. There, huge robots work endless hours finalizing battery packs for IONCOR’s customers. This is a powerful display of cutting-edge Finnish complex manufacturing. Pontos is proud to continue as an owner, and I personally am honored to be on the board of IONCOR as it heads forward into a truly inspiring future.

There were two incredibly valuable lessons from the years as a board observer in Valmet Automotive:

Complex manufacturing processes take really long – for a reason. The first valuable lesson highlights how complex a large manufacturing organization such as this can be and consequently, how slow certain internal processes are. For example, updating the financial forecast is a huge multi-stage exercise. It begins with the finance teams of each business line, who query business heads to ensure the assumptions behind the forecast are aligned with solid business expectations. Agile working style has excellent use cases, but it does not work well for everything.

Delegate and verify without getting operational. The second lesson is that as a board member, you are there to provide guidance and support, not to do the job. Sometimes you may assume an operational role to get something done on an emergency basis, but this is an exceptional situation that should be resolved as soon as feasible. Your actions should always signal trust in the people in the organization to fulfill their responsibilities based on their role.