Lucid's stock gains on record shipments, but one bear still calls them 'anemic'

By Emily Bary

Lucid deliveries come as EV sector finds itself in a difficult period

Lucid Group Inc. put out just one sentence on Tuesday morning, but that's sending its stock higher.

The one-sentence release contained Lucid's (LCID) delivery numbers for the March quarter. The company delivered 1,967 vehicles while producing 1,728.

Lucid shares are up 3% in Tuesday trading.

FactSet doesn't compile consensus expectations for Lucid's production and delivery figures, but CFRA analyst Garrett Nelson called the electric-vehicle company's latest disclosures a "mixed bag." He had been expecting 1,850 units of both production and delivery.

Nelson maintained his "strong sell" rating on the shares in the wake of the numbers.

"While [Lucid's] quarterly shipments of 1,967 units represented a record high ... the company remains well short of achieving the scale needed to drive down its unit costs," he wrote. "The results imply that [Lucid's] cash-burn rates remain extremely high and its runway is clearly shortening."

Lucid last month said its majority shareholder, Ayar Third Investment Co., planned to buy $1 billion worth of its stock.

Read: EV maker Lucid rallies after $1 billion investment by majority stockholder as it burns cash

The EV sector has been struggling lately, as smaller players contend with the cash demands of running capital-intensive businesses while industry titans like Tesla Inc. (TSLA) grapple with a cooling of consumer demand as well as heightened competition.

Tesla disappointed Wall Street with its own delivery figures earlier in April, and the company called out "the early phase of the production ramp of the updated Model 3 at our Fremont factory and factory shutdowns resulting from shipping diversions caused by the Red Sea conflict and an arson attack at Gigafactory Berlin." But a Deutsche Bank analyst said U.S. demand issues helped to fuel the company's delivery miss.

See more: Tesla's stock slumps as delivery numbers miss the mark by a wide margin

-Emily Bary

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-09-24 1126ET

Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.