Cars and Drivers

Fisker Is Falling Apart

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: November 21, 2023 10:51 am

Fisker (NYSE: FSR) is among the army of tiny electric car companies chasing Tesla and the multinational manufacturers in the race for EV market share. It needs to be bigger to be competitive, and recent news about its business shows its deep trouble. At one point, the stock was considered a “buy.”

Fisker grabbed headlines as it lost another chief accounting officer. Two have departed in just a few months. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Florus Beuting, who was named chief accounting officer in early November, has left the automaker, the company said in a regulatory filing Monday.”

The news was on top of other bad news. The NYSE flagged Fisker for late filing of important documents. Fisker has yet to release its last quarterly financial statement to the SEC on time. The NYSE gave the company six months for Fisker from November 14 to file this. Because of this, there is a chance the company will be delisted, a terrible blow to any public company that trades on a major exchange.

Although Fisker did not file a 10-Q with the SEC, it did release third-quarter results in a less-than-complete way. The company said it had delivered a meager 1,097 of its “Ocean” models during the period. By contrast, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) delivered over 400,000 vehicles in the same period. Fisker also cut its production targets, indicating its weak manufacturing capacity. Tesla also has a huge EV engine charger network. (See How Many Tesla Superchargers Each State Has)

In the third quarter, Fisker lost $91 million on $72 million in revenue. It had only $527 million of cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet. Cash will be gone in a little over five quarters at the current burn rate.

Fisker’s stock trades at $2.35, which makes it a “penny stock.” The price is down almost 90% in the last two years. There is no evidence that the shares can regain any meaningful portion of that loss.