Lucid In Trouble After Tesla’s Fall

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 29, 4:15AM EST · Published Jan 28, 7:55AM EST

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Lucid In Trouble After Tesla’s Fall — © hapabapa / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) earnings trouble sent a message to investors. All car companies that make EVs have EV revenue challenges. The most endangered are small independents, and among the most troubled is Lucid (NASDAQ: LCID | LCID Price Prediction), the stock of which is down 80% in the last year.

Industry leader Tesla’s revenue in the most recent quarter rose only 3% year over year to $25.2 billion. Automotive revenue rose just 1% to $21.6 billion. Adjusted EBITDA, which Tesla uses as a proxy for profitability, fell 27% to $4 billion. CEO Elon Musk said he expects revenue growth to slow in 2024. Tesla still owns the EV future.

Tesla’s numbers confirm what observers of the growth of EV sales already know. Even large companies like Ford have struggled recently to sell EVs. Ford and GM have pushed back investments in the sector.

If Tesla, Ford, and GM have challenges, what happens to smaller companies with less than modest sales and futures in which their positions are not likely to improve? There is a reason for the decline in Lucid’s stock price. Lucid had trouble selling cars even when the EV industry was doing better than today.

Lucid continues to show optimism about its ability to do well. It is opening a larger production facility in Casa Grande, AZ. Steven David, Senior Vice President of Operations, said, “Just like Intel is the anchor for chips that brought in TSMC, we’re looking at Lucid as almost being an automotive anchor here in Arizona, a starting point to grow, grow the automotive space, grow tier 1 suppliers, grow the technology going into it.” Many people on Wall St. doubt that.

Lucid has a new SUV with seven seats and is unusually fast, 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds. However, it is hard to say how, in a market crowded with new EV launches seemingly every month, the new “Gravity” model will get much attention.

Lucid produced only 2,391 vehicles in the final quarter of last year. A new model built in an expanded factory won’t make most people who watch the company believe those actions will help improve its shaky position in an industry where sales have started to slow.

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.