Investor's Corner
Lordstown Motors continues cash flow woes, sells Ohio plant to iPhone manufacturer Foxconn
Lordstown Motors, an electric vehicle startup based in Ohio, has announced that it has agreed in principle to work jointly on electric vehicle programs with iPhone manufacturer Hon Hai Technology Group, more commonly known as Foxconn.
Lordstown announced earlier this year that it was struggling with significant cash flow problems and that it would likely not sustain enough capital to keep its doors open through the end of June 2022. Lordstown said in a June 2021 filing with the SEC that its ability to stay open “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.” With cash issues, the automaker was likely forced to enter a joint partnership with a company that did not have financial worries. Foxconn appears to be Lordstown’s choice.
On Thursday, Lordstown confirmed the joint partnership with Foxconn:
Lordstown Motors Corp, a provider of electric light duty trucks focused on the commercial fleet market, today announced that the Company and Hon Hai Technology Group (“Foxconn”) have reached an agreement in principle to work jointly on electric vehicle programs in the Company’s assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. In connection with this announcement, the Company is today updating its production plan and financial outlook.”
Following the June 2021 filing that indicated Lordstown was set for closure within a year, the company made several changes in its boardroom. It relieved CEO Steven Burns and CFO Julio Rodriguez of their duties just days later. After appointing Becky Roof to Interim CFO and Angela Strand to Executive Chairwoman, the company then began to scramble to find financial support. However, Lordstown’s worries did not end there. Following a report from Hindenburg Research that claimed Lordstown was exaggerating its pre-order figures, especially after former CEO Burns stated that the company had accumulated 100,000 orders for its initial vehicle, the Endurance pickup.
The SEC decided to issue a post-effective amendment No. 2 to an S-1 registration statement, requesting more information and documentation that could prove Lordstown’s claimed pre-order counts. Lordstown obliged to the subpoenas. In late August, it announced that its new CEO would be Daniel Ninivaggi, a veteran of both Icahn Automotive Group LLC and Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. where he served as Director.
The new partnership with Foxconn helps Lordstown solidify its plans to manufacture the Endurance:
The Lordstown Motors team continues to move forward with its plan to build a limited number of vehicles for testing, validation, verification and regulatory approvals during the balance of 2021 and the first part of 2022. In light of the Foxconn agreement, the Company will evaluate the potential impact of the parties’ contract manufacturing relationship on commercial production, supply chain opportunities with Foxconn and the appropriate integration and timing of the parties’ operations teams and will provide an update on its production plan during our upcoming Q3 2021 earnings call currently slated for mid-November.”
It also updated its financial outlook, which consists of revised figures from the Q2 2021 Earnings Call:
- Capital expenditures – unchanged in total from $375 to $400 million, including changes in timing of tooling and equipment purchases and the inclusion of forecasted soft tooling expense purchases previously included in R&D expense.
- SG&A expenditures – $105 to $120 million, up from $95 to $105 million, primarily due to higher legal and professional fees.
- R&D expenditures – $320 to $340 million, up from $310 to $320 million, largely due to increased prototyping and pre-production expenses, reduced by the impact of moving forecasted soft tooling expense to capital expenditures as mentioned above.
- Cash balance on September 30, 2021 – $210 to $240 million, down from $225 to $275 million, which includes approximately $20 million of proceeds from the issuance of common stock under the Company’s Equity Purchase Agreement in August and September but excludes proceeds from Foxconn’s purchase of $50 million of the Company’s common stock as announced today.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
