Lucid
- Saudi Arabia's sovereign fund has a 60% stake in Lucid Motors, an EV startup.
- Months after the company went public, the stake was valued at more than $55B, per Bloomberg.
- That value dropped about 90% to $5.4 billion as Lucid reports millions in net loss.
Saudi Arabia's bet on Lucid Motors, an EV startup widely viewed as a competitor to Tesla, has yet to show a big payoff.
Shortly after the electric motor company went public in 2021, the Saudi's 60% ownership stake in Lucid through the Public Investment Fund (PIF) was valued at more than $55 billion, Bloomberg's opinion columnist Chris Bryant wrote.
According to Bryant's report, that stake is now worth $5.4 billion — about a 90.2% decrease.
The steep drop in the value of Saudi's stake coincides with Lucid's latest quarterly earnings.
This week, the company reported a $630.9 million net loss while showing a -207.74% gross margin. That margin means the cost of making Lucid's luxury electric vehicles exceeds the number of cars the company sells.
In the previous quarter, the company reported a net loss of about $764 million, which suggests the startup is losing $500,000 for every car it sells Insider's Nora Naughton reported.
During an earnings call on Tuesday, Lucid's Chief Financial Officer Sherry House argued that much of the information regarding cash-burn-per-vehicle is "misleading and frankly misunderstood."
"There are a number of things that we are doing today at a company level and at a per-vehicle level," House said, citing cost, manufacturing, labor, and overhead reduction.
Despite the steep dropoff in stock value, Saudi Arabia has yet to lose money in its investment.
In 2018, PIF invested $1.3 billion in Lucid, and it seems the Saudis have more considerable expectations for the EV company.
The country welcomed its first car-manufacturing facility in September, which can assemble 5,000 electric vehicles per year. Later on, the facility is expected to increase that output to 155,000.
A spokesperson for Lucid did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.