Electric Vehicle Start up Lucid Shares Explode After New Reservations

EV-start up company Lucid saw its shares rise this week after executives confirmed new reservations and remarked on 2022 vehicle production.

Shares of the company soared more than 5% during afterhours trading on Monday before retreating to about even after the company reported its first quarterly financial results as a public company.

Lucid also announced a notable increase in vehicle reservations and confirmed its production target for next year.
The company, which went public via a SPAC deal back in July, reported a net loss of $524.4 million in the third quarter. Lucid had also reported that it lost $1.5 billion through the first nine months of the year.

Lucid announced this week that it has over 17,000 reservations for its Air sedan, up from 13,000 through the third quarter. The reservations through September represented an order book of $1.3 billion, the company said.

The company also confirmed its 20,000 vehicle production target for next year, but said hurdles remain for achieving those plans.

“We remain confident in our ability to achieve 20,000 units in 2022,” Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said in a press release. “This target is not without risk given ongoing challenges facing the automotive industry, with global disruptions to supply chains and logistics.”

said the company is working to deal with supply chain hurdles and still planned to launch less expensive versions of Lucid Air through 2022.

Shares of Lucid are up by more than 80% since the company went public.

“I feel great about our stock price,” CFO Sherry House told CNBC during a phone interview. “The run up that we’ve had, where it is today and also the growth trajectory, frankly, that’s in front of us. I see that we’re being regarded as a technology company with a platform that’s extensible across lots of vehicle variants and sustainable tech.”

Rawlinson echoed those remarks: “I think what is happening in our stock value reflects our status as a tech company more than a car company.”

The company’s all-electric Air sedan on Monday was named MotorTrend’s car of the year,which marked the first time that the initial product from a new automotive company has received the award, according to the publication.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.