Lucid Capital Raise Should Be 'Zero Surprise To Anyone,' CEO Says

Shares of luxury EV maker Lucid Group (NASDAQ:LCID) dropped after the company announced a nearly $1.75 billion capital raise last week.

Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson told CNBC the move was intended to prevent the need for a “going concern” disclosure. In other words, the company’s financial runway is dwindling.

The CEO also said that investors should have seen the stock offering coming. 

"We'd signaled that we had a cash runway to Q4 next year. As a Nasdaq company, we have to avoid a going concern. And a going concern is issued within 12 months of your financial runway," Rawlinson said. "So, it should have been no surprise to anybody."

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Lucid's most recent public offering of 262.44 million shares came only two months after Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund injected $1.5 billion in cash into the electric vehicle maker to extend its cash runaway through the end of 2025. 

Investors and Wall Street analysts were surprised by the timing and size of Lucid's offering.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Tom Narayan predicted a sharp decline in the share price following the company's announcement last week. 

"We suspect that investors will wonder why LCID is raising more capital just after it secured the PIF capital in August, and at currently depressed share price levels," Narayan reportedly wrote in an investor note.

Rawlinson said the company is in a capital-intensive period as it prepares to launch its second electric vehicle, the Lucid Gravity SUV. The U.S.-based EV maker is also building a second factory in Saudi Arabia while expanding its Arizona factory and building its retail vehicle and service network. 

Lucid's CEO told CNBC the company now has a cash runway into 2026 and will continue to raise capital "opportunistically." 

"This is exactly as expected. It is exactly to the playbook. It should have come as zero surprise to anyone," he said. "And why did I choose this moment? Because I didn't want to string it out to the end, because I didn't have to."

Price Action: Lucid shares have fallen 28% following the announcement of the offering. They are trading slightly higher, up 0.6% at $2.50 at the time of publication Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro. 

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Image: Courtesy of Lucid Group, Inc.