Image Source : China Visual

BEIJING, February 15 (TMTPOST) ——Chinese electric car maker WM Motor had only about 1,900 employees as of Wednesday after losing another 640 in the past two months amid a struggle to survive. 

WM Motor had reportedly lost 750 employees to have 2,540 within half a month last year after a pay cut.

WM Motor shut down production due to a lack of funding as early as last year. Rumors such as property maintenance fees unpaid, office water supply suspensions, and power cutoffs, were circulated from time to time. What's worse, the company couldn't even afford to maintain the operation of its WM Motor App. WM Motor owners had complained that they were unable to control their vehicles through WM Motor App.

Moreover, the sales channel of WM Motor has been paralyzed. The WM Motor User Center in Beijing's Wufangqiao area, one of the few WM Motor showrooms that can offer customers a full range of services, including sales, test driving, delivery, and after-sales services, was already empty last January. Meanwhile, Apollo Future Mobility Group, a backdoor Hong Kong-listed company of WM Motor, was considered to be able to survive, but now the business situation of the company has taken a sharp turn for the worst.

At that time, Apollo Future announced that it intended to acquire the entire issued capital of WM Motor Global Investment Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of WM Motor Holdings, for $2.023 billion. It would be settled through the placement of 28.8 billion premium shares at the issue price of HK $0.55 per share.

To supplement the working capital of WM Motor before the completion of the listing, the company also received  nearly 2 billion yuan (291 million) in total from threre sources, including 250 million HK dollars (31.85 million) from a well-known commercial bank in Hong Kong and Macao, 500 million yuan (72.97 million) from Amer International Group and HK $1.5 billion (191 million) from Agile Group.

The financial support for the listing came after WM Motor received a capital injection from the Mianyang Municipal Government in December, which increased its registered capital from 170 million yuan($24.9 million) to 520 million yuan ($75.9 million).