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- Lucid Group shares fell 15% Thursday after a disappointing earnings update.
- The EV maker missed its revenue targets and said it will make fewer cars this year than Wall Street expected.
- Demand for its luxury electric cars has taken a hit as rival Tesla's grows thanks to aggressive price cuts.
Electric-vehicle maker Lucid Group's stock price slumped Thursday after the Tesla rival released disappointing guidance for the year ahead.
Shares fell 14.6% to $8.53 at the opening bell after the luxury electric car manufacturer said it would make fewer cars than Wall Street expected this year and reported weak order numbers in its fourth-quarter earnings release.
In results published after the market closed Wednesday, Lucid said it plans to produce between 10,000 and 14,000 vehicles this year – well below the 21,815 projected by analysts, according to Visible Alpha.
The company also said it had produced 7,180 cars last year but only delivered 4,369 of those, which analysts see as a sign that it's struggling to maintain demand in the face of Tesla's aggressive price cuts.
"We've gotten past the major bottlenecks limiting manufacturing, but this had some impact on the demand we generated early on, and this has been exacerbated by the challenging macroeconomic environment," Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said on a call with analysts Wednesday.
The EV maker reported a loss of 28 cents per share, narrower than the loss of 40 cents a share forecast.
It also missed on revenue, which grew quarter-on-quarter to almost $258 million but fell short of the $303 million expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
Rival Tesla kicked off a price war for electric vehicles in Asia late last year in a bid to revive faltering demand. It followed up on that by slashing the price of its Model 3 and Model Y cars by between 6% to 20% in the US last month.
Lucid responded with price cuts of its own in February and currently offers a $7,500 discount on certain models of its Air Sedan that are ordered before the end of March.
Thursday's losses dented some of the gains the EV challenger has made in 2023. It's still up 46% year-to-date, compared to a 66% jump for Tesla.
Lucid's stock has risen as part of a broader tech rally. It's also been boosted by rumors of a looming takeover by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which invests on behalf of the government and already owns over 60% of the carmaker's shares.