german aviation startup lilium has agreed to go public through a merger with qell acquisition corp a special purpose acquisition company founded by former general motors executive barry engle its the latest deal for the urban air mobility industry following announced spac agreements including archer aviation and joby aviation a spac is a blankcheck company formed as an alternative to an ipo because it raises funds to buy something but doesnt have any operations of its own they have no assets other than cash and they trade on a stock exchange before merging with private companies the transaction which officials announced tuesday implies a proforma enterprise value of 24 billion and a proforma equity value of 33 billion for the combined company the postmerged company is expected to receive approximately 830 million from the deal including 450 million from a fully committed common stock pipe offering and 380 million cash held in trust the deal is expected to close in the second quarter at which point the combined company will trade on the nasdaq exchange under lilm daniel wiegand ceo and cofounder of lilium said the funding should provide the company with enough capital to reach its targeted commercial launch in the us and europe beginning in 2024 the company has previously raised 400 million he said this is going to give us both a lot of expertise and operational knowledge from barry and his team but also the financing to achieve the type of certification and market entry with our airplane wiegand told cnbc its a tremendously big and important step for us as a company lilium is developing a sevenseat electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft some have characterized  evtols as electric air taxis or flying cars the company plans to primarily focus on intercity flights rather than shorter incity trips other companies have discussed doing its target launch markets are florida and germany engle who was head of gms north american operations before leaving the company in august described liliums product as a highly engineered aircraft he said its proprietary technology as well as the team wiegand has built including tom enders a board member and former ceo of airbus were main reasons for seeking the deal its a team that knows what theyre doing and is able to actually execute what admittedly is a very bold very ambitious agenda engle said weve done our homework weve done a ton of due diligence and we couldnt be more pleased and more proud to put our name on this one lilium expects to begin generating revenue in 2024 and achieve a pretax adjusted profit in 2025 according to engle and wiegand the company expects revenue of 33 billion by 2026 followed by nearly 59 billion in 2027 spacs became an increasingly popular way for companies particularly prerevenue startups to go public in the past year they were almost guaranteed to pop on the first day of becoming a public company but not any longer the firstday return of us spacs dropped to near zero in march from 54 in february and 61 in january according to data from university of florida finance professor jay ritter engle and wiegand said they are not worried about the shortterm volatility or performance of shares which for qell are down about 13 since bloomberg news reported march 3 the spac and lilium were in talks to merge we think this is one that will stand the test of time engle said a little bit of shortterm volatility is not something that were concerned about were building a business here that is going to grow over literally decades along the way there will be both good markets and bad but this will endure jpmorgan securities and barclays are acting as financial and capital markets advisors to qell citi is acting as exclusive financial advisor to lilium the three financial institutions are acting as lead placement agents for the pipe transaction investors in the pipe include baillie gifford blackrock tencent and ferrovial