Lucid Falls Apart

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
Lucid Falls Apart

© PeopleImages / Getty Images

The dumpster fire that is Lucid Group Inc. (NASDAQ: LCID | LCID Price Prediction) just got worse. The company’s largest shareholder and people who bought shares in the open market put $3 billion into the electric vehicle (EV) firm, and other common shareholders ran for cover. Lucid’s stock dropped 16% in a day and fell perilously close to its 52-week low of $6.09. The 52-week high is $21.78. It is rare for investors to take such a beating. (These 20 cars have been completely redesigned for 2023.)
[in-text-ad]
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) made an investment that brought in $1.8 billion. The fund controls Lucid, owning just over 60% of the company’s shares. It is good that the PIF has a tremendous amount of money. The Lucid investment is a long shot.
[nativounit]
Lucid has two significant problems. First, it charges $87,000 or more for its cars. One version sells for $249,000. It cannot reasonably claim these are any better than a car from Tesla, which mostly charges less for its vehicles. The other hurdle is that Lucid sells remarkably few of its vehicles. Lucid says it will produce only about 10,000 cars in 2023. Tesla sells that number in just two or three days.
[wallst_email_signup]
Lucid’s most recent quarterly report showed that revenue was only $149 million. The company lost $780 million. Its unit sales will need to grow by the tens of thousands per year to break even financially.
[recirclink id=1206389]
The EV market is becoming more crowded by the day. Every major car company in the world has introduced, or is about to introduce, a lineup of EVs. Lucid sells only one model, which can be modified into four configurations. Its brand will be lost in an avalanche of new EVs.

Why the PIF would put so much money into Lucid is a mystery. Why this caused so many investors to dump the stock is not.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618