Lucid secures funding until the end of 2025

Lucid Motors has received $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF). That means the carmaker now has sufficient funds until the fourth quarter of 2025. This comes as Lucid announced rather positive financial results for the second quarter of this year.

Moreover, the investment comes just as Lucid kicked off pre-production of its electric SUV Gravity at its factory in the US state of Arizona. The newly acquired funds will be used to ramp up production of the latter and build its factory in Saudi Arabia.

The PIF affiliate is called Ayar Third Investment Corporation. This is already its second investment, after buying one billion dollars of newly created series of convertible preferred stock via private placement in March of this year. This time, Ayar Third Investment will buy 750 million dollars worth of convertible preferred stock and provide a similar amount as a credit line.

Lucid opened a factory in Saudi Arabia in September last year, where it assembles its electric sedan, the Lucid Air. For now, it has opted for a semi-knocked-down assembly (SKD) concept there. The initial annual capacity of the SKD assembly is initially 5,000 vehicles. From the middle of this decade, Lucid plans to fully manufacture its electric cars at the plant in Saudi Arabia and increase capacity to 155,000 vehicles per year.

The US carmaker has also announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2024. At 200.6 million dollars, revenue exceeded analysts’ expectations, as price cuts earlier this year helped increase sales of Lucids electric sedan Air. According to Lucid, it ended the second quarter “with approximately $4.28 billion of total liquidity.”

Lucid published its latest production and delivery figures a few weeks ago. Lucid produced 2,110 EVs in the second quarter and delivered 2,394 vehicles in Q2 – up 70.5 per cent compared to the same period last year.

“I’m very encouraged by our sales and market share momentum we’re experiencing, the benefits we’re realizing from our cost optimization programs, and the excitement that’s been building into the Lucid Gravity launch, setting a strong foundation for the rest of the year,” said Peter Rawlinson, CEO and CTO of Lucid. “The tremendous financial value potential our technology enables is now becoming better recognized, and our achievement of a landmark efficiency of 5.0 miles per kilowatt hour, ahead of where we anticipated, is a further proof point of our leadership as a technology company.”

“Our Q2 financial performance reflects the positive momentum of increased sales of Lucid Air and the results of our cost reduction efforts, which contribute to the journey toward improving gross margin,” added Gagan Dhingra, Interim Chief Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer at Lucid.

Speaking of “cost reduction efforts,” just in May, Lucid Motors announced that it cut up to 400 jobs, or about 6 per cent of its workforce. The job cuts will be completed by the end of the third quarter.

lucidmotors.com (investment), lucidmotors.com(Q2/2024) reuters.com