Investor's Corner
Lordstown Motors delays Endurance truck, sells Ohio factory to Foxconn
Lordstown Motors (NASDAQ: RIDE) reported its Q3 2021 Financial Results on Thursday and reported that it will delay the Endurance all-electric pickup once again. Additionally, Lordstown Motors confirmed the sale of its Lordstown, Ohio factory to Foxconn.
“The third quarter marked a significant strategic shift for Lordstown Motors,” Lordstown CEO Dan Ninivaggi said. “We announced our Agreement in Principle (“AIP”) with Foxconn regarding the sale of our Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant and the negotiation of a contract manufacturing agreement. The definitive Asset Purchase Agreement with Foxconn, implementing the AIP, was executed earlier this week.”
Lordstown has been struggling with cash flow issues for most of 2021. In June, the company announced that it was facing major cash flow issues that left its future uncertain. There was “substantial doubt” that Lordstown would keep its doors open past June 2022 after filing a sizeable loss of $125 million in Q1 2021. Lordstown’s future “is dependent on its ability to complete the development of its electric vehicles, obtain regulatory approval, begin commercial-scale production and launch the sale of such vehicles,” the company said. It planned to begin building Endurance pickups in September, but this was evidently delayed, according to a note to investors from the Q3 Earnings Call.
“Since the beginning of the fourth quarter, we have begun building the first of what we expect to be approximately 100 pre-production vehicles that we will use to pursue a variety of validation activities aimed at achieving full homologation. This is a modest delay from earlier expectations as component and material shortages, along with other supply chain challenges, remain an issue for Lordstown Motors just as they are for the industry at large. We now expect that commercial production and deliveries of the Endurance will begin in the third quarter of 2022,” Lordstown said.
While it previously gave an anticipated closure date of June 2022 in the filing from June 2021, the new expectation is that Lordstown will be able to build Endurance pickups at its factory sometime in Q2 2022 and begin deliveries in Q3 2022. The influx of cash that is coming from the sale of its Ohio factory to Foxconn, which it announced in August, is helping the company keep its doors open for an extended period, which will automatically contribute to more time to develop the Endurance pickup. Lordstown details the transaction along with the cash balances on its financial sheet:
“Cash balances of between $150 million and $180 million as of December 31, 2021, inclusive of the anticipated down payment of $100 million to be made by Foxconn under the Asset Purchase Agreement in November, and $15 million in issuances under the equity purchase agreement in October, but exclusive of any other potential financings.”
The company also announced the acquisition of Edward T. Hightower as President and Shea Burns as Senior Vice President, Operations.
We are thrilled to bring on Edward T. Hightower as President and Shea Burns as Senior Vice President, Operations.
Welcome to Lordstown.#RideWithLordstown
Read the press release: https://t.co/mnqvzinmag pic.twitter.com/9uG9qa7E0s
— Lordstown Motors (@LordstownMotors) November 12, 2021
Disclosure: Joey Klender is not a Lordstown shareholder.
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Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed at an all-time high on Tuesday, jumping over 3 percent during the day and finishing at $489.88.
The price beats the previous record close, which was $479.86.
Shares have had a crazy year, dipping more than 40 percent from the start of the year. The stock then started to recover once again around late April, when its price started to climb back up from the low $200 level.
This week, Tesla started to climb toward its highest levels ever, as it was revealed on Sunday that the company was testing driverless Robotaxis in Austin. The spike in value pushed the company’s valuation to $1.63 trillion.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
It is the seventh-most valuable company on the market currently, trailing Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
Shares closed up $14.57 today, up over 3 percent.
The stock has gone through a lot this year, as previously mentioned. Shares tumbled in Q1 due to CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which pulled his attention away from his companies and left a major overhang on their valuations.
However, things started to rebound halfway through the year, and as the government started to phase out the $7,500 tax credit, demand spiked as consumers tried to take advantage of it.
Q3 deliveries were the highest in company history, and Tesla responded to the loss of the tax credit with the launch of the Model 3 and Model Y Standard.
Additionally, analysts have announced high expectations this week for the company on Wall Street as Robotaxi continues to be the focus. With autonomy within Tesla’s sights, things are moving in the direction of Robotaxi being a major catalyst for growth on the Street in the coming year.
Elon Musk
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, analyst says
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Tesla needs to come through on this one Robotaxi metric, Mark Delaney of Goldman Sachs says.
Tesla is in the process of rolling out its Robotaxi platform to areas outside of Austin and the California Bay Area. It has plans to launch in five additional cities, including Houston, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
However, the company’s expansion is not what the focus needs to be, according to Delaney. It’s the speed of deployment.
The analyst said:
“We think the key focus from here will be how fast Tesla can scale driverless operations (including if Tesla’s approach to software/hardware allows it to scale significantly faster than competitors, as the company has argued), and on profitability.”
Profitability will come as the Robotaxi fleet expands. Making that money will be dependent on when Tesla can initiate rides in more areas, giving more customers access to the program.
There are some additional things that the company needs to make happen ahead of the major Robotaxi expansion, one of those things is launching driverless rides in Austin, the first city in which it launched the program.
This week, Tesla started testing driverless Robotaxi rides in Austin, as two different Model Y units were spotted with no occupants, a huge step in the company’s plans for the ride-sharing platform.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
CEO Elon Musk has been hoping to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis in Austin for several months, first mentioning the plan to have them out by the end of 2025 in September. He confirmed on Sunday that Tesla had officially removed vehicle occupants and started testing truly unsupervised rides.
Although Safety Monitors in Austin have been sitting in the passenger’s seat, they have still had the ability to override things in case of an emergency. After all, the ultimate goal was safety and avoiding any accidents or injuries.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its ‘Neutral’ rating and its $400 price target. Delaney said, “Tesla is making progress with its autonomous technology,” and recent developments make it evident that this is true.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets bold Robotaxi prediction from Wall Street firm
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a bold Robotaxi prediction from Morgan Stanley, which anticipates a dramatic increase in the size of the company’s autonomous ride-hailing suite in the coming years.
Last week, Andrew Percoco took over Tesla analysis for Morgan Stanley from Adam Jonas, who covered the stock for years. Percoco seems to be less optimistic and bullish on Tesla shares, while still being fair and balanced in his analysis.
Percoco dug into the Robotaxi fleet and its expansion in the coming years in his latest note, released on Tuesday. The firm expects Tesla to increase the Robotaxi fleet size to 1,000 vehicles in 2026. However, that’s small-scale compared to what they expect from Tesla in a decade.
Tesla expands Robotaxi app access once again, this time on a global scale
By 2035, Morgan Stanley believes there will be one million Robotaxis on the road across multiple cities, a major jump and a considerable fleet size. We assume this means the fleet of vehicles Tesla will operate internally, and not including passenger-owned vehicles that could be added through software updates.
He also listed three specific catalysts that investors should pay attention to, as these will represent the company being on track to achieve its Robotaxi dreams:
- Opening Robotaxi to the public without a Safety Monitor. Timing is unclear, but it appears that Tesla is getting closer by the day.
- Improvement in safety metrics without the Safety Monitor. Tesla’s ability to improve its safety metrics as it scales miles driven without the Safety Monitor is imperative as it looks to scale in new states and cities in 2026.
- Cybercab start of production, targeted for April 2026. Tesla’s Cybercab is a purpose-built vehicle (no steering wheel or pedals, only two seats) that is expected to be produced through its state-of-the-art unboxed manufacturing process, offering further cost reductions and thus accelerating adoption over time.
Robotaxi stands to be one of Tesla’s most significant revenue contributors, especially as the company plans to continue expanding its ride-hailing service across the world in the coming years.
Its current deployment strategy is controlled and conservative to avoid any drastic and potentially program-ruining incidents.
So far, the program, which is active in Austin and the California Bay Area, has been widely successful.
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