Lucid’s Shares Fall 10% After the Marque Announces Lower Than Expected Production
Lucid Motors’s stock isn’t performing at the level of its boundary-pushing EV.
The marque’s share price dropped sharply following the release of its 2023 production target on Wednesday, reports Reuters. That’s because the number of Air EVs the brand said it will build this year is significantly lower than what industry analysts were expecting.
More from Robb Report
Listen: The New Dodge Daytona EV's 'Exhaust' Sounds Better Than Your Gas-Guzzler
Elon Musk's Latest Tesla Cybertruck Video Suggests the EV Pickup Might Actually Arrive This Year
The Pininfarina Battista Just Smashed Two More Speed Records
Based in Newark, Calif., the carmaker said it plans to build between 10,000 and 14,000 examples of its luxury battery-powered sedan before the end of the year. The high end of that estimate would be nearly double number of EVs the marque built last year (7,180) but is far off from the 21,815 figure that analysts such as Visible Alpha anticipated.
A lower-than-expected production target wasn’t the only bad bit of news for Lucid, though. It also appears that demand for the company’s Air luxury EV is slipping, according to the financial news wire. Despite building over 7,000 vehicles last year, the company delivered just 4,369 during that time. Additionally, Lucid said it currently has 28,000 pending reservations for the Air as of Tuesday, a figure that is down 6,000 from the third quarter of 2023. The marque has delivered just 1,900 EVs since then, suggesting that a not-insignificant chunk of the drop may be due to cancellations.
Lucid has been plagued by supply chain and logistic issues since launching during the pandemic, but it now has to deal with aggressive price cuts from more established rivals such as Tesla and Ford. The company responded earlier this month by offering a $7,500 discount on Airs purchased before March 31. The Touring version of the brand’s sole EV starts at $107,400, while the Grand Touring variant, which offers an industry-leading range of 516 miles, starts at $138,000.
“We’ve gotten past the major bottlenecks limiting manufacturing, but this had some impact on the demand we generated early on, and this has been exacerbated by the challenging macroeconomic environment,” CEO Peter Rawlinson was quoted as saying during a call with analysts.
As a result of Wednesday’s bad news, Lucid shares fell 11 percent after the close of business. By the time trading resumed on Thursday, the price had fallen 14 percent, according to CNBC. As bad as things may seem right now, they have actually improved since the beginning of last fall. The company ended last year with $4.4 billion in cash after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund upped its share in the company to 62 percent. It also has access to an additional $500 million via credit. That means the company has enough money to last until the end of the first quarter of 2024.
Best of Robb Report
The 2024 Chevy C8 Corvette: Everything We Know About the Powerful Mid-Engine Beast
The 15 Best Travel Trailers for Camping and Road-Tripping Adventures
Sign up for Robb Report's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
