Needham, a well-known Wall Street investment agency, downgraded the agency's rating on Lucid Group, a new American car builder, from “buy” to “hold” on Monday local time.
The Zhitong Finance app learned that Needham, a well-known Wall Street investment agency, downgraded the agency's rating on Lucid Group (LCID.US), a new American car builder, from “buy” to “hold” on Monday local time. The agency lowered its performance expectations for the electric vehicle manufacturer and said that after thoroughly studying the partnership agreement between Lucid and Aston Martin (Aston Martin), the agency was not optimistic about Lucid's industry-leading electric vehicle efficiency technology capabilities. Needham said that this downward revision of expectations was made against the backdrop of Lucid's third quarter results and poor performance outlook.
Chris Pierce (Chris Pierce), an analyst from Needham, warned: “With prices between 20,000 and 30,000 US dollars per car, it is difficult for us to see mass-market, low-cost OEMs using Lucid Group technology.” Although Pierce and his team are passionate about this SUV and its technical specifications, they don't think it will excite investors anytime soon, considering the SUV is scheduled to be put into production by the end of 2024. Like Lucid Group, the agency also gave FSR.US (FSR.US), another new car builder, a “hold” rating. Pierce said that like Lucid, Fisker (Fisker) is also constrained by demand.
At the same time, Needham maintained the agency's “buy” rating for electric pickup truck manufacturer Rivian Automotive (RIVN.US) and a target stock price of up to $25. The stock also continued to remain on Needham's Strongly Recommended Stock List (Strongly Recommended Stock List) list, and Rivian became Needham's only electric vehicle stock to be given a “buy” rating. Needham expressed optimism about Rivian's low-priced R2 platform.
According to agency analyst Pierce, “Our latest round of used electric vehicle price surveys continues to support strong demand for Rivian trucks, while the trend of oversupply across the industry has reduced investor enthusiasm about the penetration rate of electric vehicles in the short term.” Rivian is currently Needham's only electric vehicle stock in its EV OEM coverage to receive a “buy” rating, mainly because the investment agency said there is higher uncertainty about demand and/or production of electric vehicles from other startups and Tesla.
Analyst Pierce from Needham expressed high doubts about the “performance growth levers” of Tesla, the electric vehicle leader led by Elon Musk, such as fully automated driving software, Tesla robots, and new artificial intelligence technology.
In the US stock pre-market trading on Monday, Lucid Group's stock price once fell nearly 2%, while Rivian Automotive's pre-market decline was less than 1%.