Lucid has published its Q4 2022 and full year financial results and with only slightly exceeding their slashed production guidance the automaker’s revenue was lower than Wall Street expectations. On a positive note Lucid says they except to be able to double their production in 2023, but it is still well short of what they were originally hoping to build in 2022.
According to a press release from Lucid their Q4 revenue came in at $257.7 million, compared to $303 million expected by analysts. This gave Lucid annual revenue of $608.2 million, resulting in a loss of the $0.28 per share.
The automaker ended the year with $4.4 billion in cash or cash equivalents, which it said is enough to continue to fund their operations through the first quarter of 2024. This is an increase from the $3.85 billion it had in cash reserves at the end of Q3 2022, infused by $1.5 billion raised from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and other investors last year. The PIF now owns a 62% stake in the company.
Looking forward to the remainder of the year, Lucid said it is expecting to build between 10,000 and 14,000 cars in 2023. The high end of that range would be double what they were able to produce in 2022, but the low end of the range is still half of what they were hoping to build in 2022 at this time last year, before slashing it multiple times in the following months.
“Last year was a challenging year for everyone, yet despite the extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges, the team persevered with an unrelenting focus on delivering what we believe is the best luxury sedan on the market,” said CEO Peter Rawlinson.
A troubling trend for Lucid is the number of outstanding reservations, which continues to drop by more than the number of cars being delivered. As of February 21, 2023 Lucid said it had “over 28,000” reservations. At the end of Q3 Lucid said it has 34,000 reservations, but with only 1,932 deliveries in Q4, that equates to a net loss of more than 4,000 reservations in about four and a half months.
Lucid has recognized this as an issue and has implemented some aggressive sales tactics in which they have been calling customers multiple times to try and get them to finalize their order. They have also been offering substantial discounts on the Air, further reducing their already poor margins.
