Lucid Motors, to be officially named Lucid Group (LCID) next week following the closure of its planned merger with the SPAC Churchill Capital Corp. IV (NYSE:CCIV), provided iterative updates today regarding the production and delivery of the Lucid Air EV via an investor call held just moments ago.
In anticipation of this investor call, Churchill Capital IV also filed an update to Lucid Motors’ investor presentation earlier today. While the presentation did not disclose any new material information, it did reiterate previous commitments made by Lucid Motors, thereby indicating that the EV manufacturer remains on track to achieve its stated goals. As a refresher, Lucid currently has over 10K reservations for the Air EV and expects to deliver at least 20K units to the North American and EMEA markets in 2022, with deliveries to China commencing only in 2023. Moreover, the Lucid Gravity SUV is now slated to launch in H2 2023. The company is also prioritizing $350 million in CAPEX for 2021-2023 in order to add 2.7 million square feet of additional manufacturing space at its Arizona facility for production ramp-up.
This brings us to the crux of the matter. Despite outsized expectations, Lucid Motors chose not to provide a definitive date regarding the commencement of the deliveries of the Lucid Air EV. Peter Rawlinson, the company’s CEO, did note that Lucid Air was currently going through its testing and validation process and that the company remained on track to initiate deliveries in H2 2021. However, this information is nothing new, and the investor call, for all intents and purposes, did not add much value other than regurgitating the information already disclosed in today’s updated investor presentation. Please note that under normal circumstances, this additional clarity would have been a welcome occurrence. But in light of the immense hype, the call did seem a bit of a letdown.
Nonetheless, Lucid Motors did provide one important update. According to Peter Rawlinson, Lucid Air offers greater “mileage” than Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). Moreover, the EV is currently undergoing EPA testing in order to validate its claimed range of over 500 miles on a single charge.
As far as its product penetration strategy is concerned, Lucid Motors believes that its annual volume would touch 500,000 units per annum by 2030, corresponding to a 4 percent share of the overall EV market. Additionally, during this decade, Lucid aims to retail 1.7 million units of the Air EV and 1.5 million units of Lucid Gravity, based on luxury EV market expanding at an annual pace of around 5 percent.
Readers should note that Churchill Capital IV investors would be required to vote on a number of crucial proposals next week in order to formalize the merger agreement with Lucid Motors. As a part of this process, investors would be required to approve a dramatic hike in CCIV’s authorized share capital. While the SPAC will need to issue 1.595 billion Lucid Group common shares – assuming no redemptions – to existing Lucid investors as well as to cater to its PIPE investors, the proposed authorized share capital is nearly 10x this immediate issuance requirement, thereby giving rise to fears of rampant dilution. However, the investor presentation today did assuage some of these concerns as Lucid Motors now believes that the combined company’s existing cash resources would be sufficient to meet its needs at least through 2022.
The post Homestretch: Lucid Motors Remains on Track When It Comes To Lucid Air Deliveries, but Chooses To Not Give a Definitive Date During Today’s Investor Call by Rohail Saleem appeared first on Wccftech.
Powered by WPeMatico
