- Lucid posted a net loss of $684 million during the first quarter and total revenue of $172 million.
- While the loss is less than it was in 2023, the revenue is well below expectations.
- The automaker is pointing to the future as its light at the end of the tunnel.
The market for electric vehicles appears to be cooling off, and Lucid seems to be feeling the cold breeze. The EV startup just posted its first-quarter results for 2024, and many of the figures fell short of analysts’ expectations. However, despite these setbacks, the brand remains optimistic about a strong second half of the year. Lucid is pinning its hopes on the upcoming Gravity SUV to help boost sales and drive growth.
Earnings per share (in reality losses in this case) were down from an expected -0.25 cents to -0.30 cents, revenue was $172 million instead of the expected $182 million, and the $2.17 billion in cash on hand is 13 percent less than Lucid had at this time in 2023. Those figures aren’t especially inspiring but it’s not all bad.
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On the positive side of the coin, the automaker only lost $684 million during Q1, which is down from a $780 million loss in Q1 2023. In addition, it’s worth noting that some analysts had predicted that Lucid would only make $150 million in revenue so for them, $172 million is a plus. Factually, revenue was up almost 16 percent compared to 2023.
Understandably, the company is looking toward the future for optimism. “Our sales momentum is building, our focus upon cost remains relentless, and we believe Gravity is on track to become the best SUV in the world,” said Peter Rawlinson. His CFO, Gagan Dhingra says that the brand is continuing to cut costs where it can.
“We continue to make significant progress on our cost optimization programs… We’re focused on significant growth as we enter the next transformational phase of Lucid’s end markets while simultaneously driving cost discipline.” That’s important considering that it lost somewhere around $347,000 for every vehicle that it sold on average. And that transformational phase, as Dhingra puts it, importantly includes the introduction of the Gravity SUV.
It’s slated to be the next big thing from Lucid later this year and all signs point to it being on track for a late 2024 production start. The company confirmed that it expects to make 9,000 vehicles this year. While this figure represents an increase over last year’s production, it’s only a slight uptick from the final production figure of 8,428 vehicles. As of this writing, Lucid stock has dropped nearly 10% in after-hours trading following the Q1 results, falling from $3.06 to $2.79.
