- Leapmotor's founder bought about HK$230 million worth of company shares, marking management's fifth stake increase in two years.
- Total share purchases by the Leapmotor founder since 2024 have reached about HK$1.2 billion.
Zhu Jiangming, founder and CEO of Stellantis-backed Chinese EV maker Leapmotor, has once again increased his stake in the company to demonstrate management's confidence in its business prospects.
Zhu and his concert party, Fu Liquan, recently purchased a combined 5,080,200 of the company's H shares on the open market at an average price of HK$45.10 ($5.75) per share, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
The latest share purchase totaled about HK$230 million, marking the fifth stake increase by management over the past two years.
Immediately following this latest transaction, the single largest shareholder group, which includes Zhu, now holds a combined 23.89% stake in the automaker.
This comprises about 211 million H shares and about 129 million domestic shares of Leapmotor.
Since first announcing their stake increase plan in August 2024, Leapmotor's leadership has accumulated nearly HK$1.2 billion worth of shares across these five transactions.
This series of share purchases comes as the EV maker strives to maintain its strong sales growth momentum and expand its market share.
Zhu and Fu just completed a purchase involving 2.15 million company shares last December, with that stake increase totaling more than HK$100 million.
Prior to that, in October and April of last year, the shareholder group invested HK$205 million and HK$316 million, respectively, to absorb more of the company's publicly traded shares.
As one of the emerging EV startups with an increasingly solid financial position, Leapmotor achieved its first full-year profitability and substantial revenue growth last year.
The Chinese EV maker delivered a robust 50,029 vehicles in March, up 34.87% year-on-year and 78.25% from February, according to data it released yesterday.
In the first quarter, Leapmotor delivered 110,155 vehicles, representing a 25.82% year-on-year increase but a 45.21% decline from the fourth quarter of 2025.
(\$1 = HK$ 7.8371)
