Lucid is in so many problems that even the deep bag Saudis may not be able to save the company – Jalopnik

Lucid reported on Tuesday Q2 incomeAnd the results were rough. The company lost more than $ 850 million ($ 632 million on an adapted basis) on a turnover of around $ 260 million. It delivered a kind of respectable 3,309 vehicles in the quarter, but is also led to a lower total 2025 production of 18,000-20,000 units, and at least Lucid really has to start production and overcome supply chain problems to reach that brand. The company said it has almost $ 5 billion in liquidity, but of that less than $ 2 billion is really cash.

The share was hammered on Tuesday in the market after the market and opened 7% on Wednesday. Not exactly an ideal result because Lucid also wants to do a reverse stock splitTo turn ten shares into one and to remove the company from the Penny Stock area, to expel a Nasdaq if shares under $ 1 fall. The company says that it can support itself until mid-2026, but there is no doubt that it has to raise much more money to continue its current burn interest-probably as much as it in its public offer of 2021, a Spac deal that yielded $ 4.4 billion. Oh, and Lucid still has no real CEO, after Peter Rawlinson left earlier this year.

The book about Lucid has always been that Pif, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, will step the startup forever. PIF owns around 60 percent of Lucid and seemed satisfied to cast billions in what an impressive operation-collecting operation has been. It is estimated that PIF has between $ 600-700 billionSo maintaining lucidly is not ruinous expensive. But at some point you have to ask yourself how much PIF is willing to lose Lucid.

Because Lucid looks really structurally unprofitable, because it is currently being operated (and there is nothing new called Merkambassador TimothAndE chalamet Can do that). In three months it spent more than $ 850 million to generate $ 260 million. That was mainly on the sale of its expensive airsedan, because the new Gravity SUV has not yet been increased to assume the sales burden. According to Interim -CEO Marc Winterhoff During the Call Conference with analysts After the Q2 figures were announced, gravity also suffered delays due to problems obtaining enough magnets from China, who needs the SUV for its electric motors. But even if Lucid solves that problem, it has to increase the turnover enormously to break even on a quarterly basis. And the cheaper, sub-$ 50,000 vehicle that could enable it to reach more scale is planned to arrive until 2026.

It is frightening to wear its besieged balance in an EV market that slowly loses the federal incentives in the US. Lucid is also confronted with considerably more competition than Tesla ever did, when the last struggled to validate his activities in the middle of the 2010. Consumers nowadays have many options when it comes to buying all-electric SUVs, so Lucid cannot assume that it will even convert the lower end of the production guidelines of 2025.

And even if so, it is uncertain that those sales would even be profitable from a distance. In general, Lucid has followed the pattern of many Spac companies and in fact became a challenge as an investment (the share has fallen more than 70 percent compared to its peak). Normally you would expect PIF to think that the company will take private life to escape what a death spiral could be, but the inverted split implies that Lucid will try to drive out this gloomy period and tries to get gravity in a decent position.

Lucid will generate many figures between now and mid -2026, but those who matter are topline and cash fires. In the absence of a large financing infusion or some epic deals with other car manufacturers, that yawning gap must confront some terrible scenarios.