Lucid Shares Ruined By New CEO

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 6, 9:17AM EDT

Quick Read

A $1 Billion Loss For Quarter
Too Small To Survive
It’s Cars Are Too Expensive

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Lucid Shares Ruined By New CEO — © Justin Sullivan / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Lucid (NASDAQ: LCID | LCID Price Prediction) has had enough trouble selling vehicles and explaining billion-dollar losses. Its new CEO made Wall St.’s perception of Lucid’s prospects even worse. He said he needs to review the EV firm’s operations. He hinted that, in the short term, these may be poor.

New CEO Silvio Napoli said, on Lucid’s quarterly investment call, that he was suspending the company’s guidance for 2026 unit sales. And he indicated that the figure for these sales could be lowered. CNBC reported, “Lucid Group said it will make moves to better align its production with customer demand for its luxury all-electric vehicles.”

Lucid shares dropped 6.5% yesterday and another 4% today.

Lucid reported that it produced only 5,550 vehicles in the first quarter and only delivered 3,093. Deliveries were hampered by a production problem. “February delivery timing was affected by a supplier issue resolved during the quarter,” the company said.

Lucid figures missed Wall St. expectations badly. Its EPS loss of $3.46 was worse than the forecast loss of $2.64. Its revenue was $282.5 million, compared to the $440.4 million expected. It lost $1 billion compared to a loss of $731 million in the same period last year. Management commented, “We are entering Lucid’s next growth phase with a clear mandate: to accelerate toward financial self-sufficiency while delivering industry-leading innovation and customer experience.” It is a statement that is hard to believe.

To start, selling 5,000 vehicles a quarter makes it impossible to believe Lucid will ever be profitable. Even at a large multiple of these unit sales, a loss is certain.

The price of Lucid vehicles ranges from $70,000 to $249,000. The current US EV market has been largely driven by efforts to make inexpensive EVs to attract a larger customer base. One telling part of the Lucid sales process is that it offers 0% APR financing for up to 60 months. It has to lose money on the arrangement

The market for EVs in the US has eroded compared to last year. Napoli does not have any chance to save the company.

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.