Shares of Nikola Corp. surged Thursday, as part of a broad rally in the electric-vehicle sector and the broader stock market, even after hydrogen and battery-electric truck maker reported a surprise widening in losses and negative revenue.
Chief Executive Steve Girsky helped fuel investor optimism by highlighting Nikola’s “first-mover advantage with its hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks.”
He noted that, starting Jan. 1, all new trucks registered with the California Air Resources Board for operation in California ports must be zero-emission vehicles.
“We think the competition is well behind us and believe there is white space for us to capture market share with the introduction of the Advanced Clean Fleets Rule, and incentives like HVIP [Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project] and ISEF [Innovative Small E-Fleet] offering up to $288,000 and $408,000, respectively, per hydrogen fuel cell electric truck in California.”
The stock
NKLA,
shot up 8.6% in morning trading, while the Global X Autonomous & Electric Vehicles ETF
DRIV
climbed 2.2% and the S&P 500 index
SPX
rose 1.6%.
Also read: Tesla’s stock surges toward best day in a month as part of a broad EV-sector rally.
Nikola reported before the open a net loss of $425.8 million, or 50 cents a share, after a loss of $236.2 million, or 54 cents a share, as the number of shares used in the calculation of per-share results nearly doubled to 857.2 million from 438.4 million.
Excluding nonrecurring items, the adjusted per-share loss widened to 30 cents from 28 cents, while the FactSet consensus was for a narrowing in per-share losses to 14 cents.
Revenue swung to a negative $1.73 million from a positive $24.2 million, compared with the FactSet consensus for positive $9.5 million, as trucks shipped dropped to 3 from 63.
Nikola also updated investors on the voluntary recall it issued for its battery-electric trucks in August. The company said after further investigation, it was determined that the “compromise” of the battery packs was not limited to the coolant manifold, and therefore it was decided that the Romeo packs on existing customer battery-electric trucks would be replaced.
The company expects the recall to cost it $61.8 million, with actual cash disbursements to take place over the next nine to 12 months.
“We anticipate delivering battery-electric trucks to customers again in Q1 2024,” the company said in a statement.
Nikola’s stock has still plunged 62.3% over the past three months, while the EV ETF has dropped 19.7% and the S&P 500 has slipped 4.7%.
Read the full article here
