Lucid’s main priorities after the departure of the CEO of EV

Actions of the electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid group fell by more than 10% on Wednesday following a degraded company’s actions by Bank of America and the brutal departure of CEO Peter Rawlinson.

Rawlinson, who was also director of company technology, was an engine of its operations at this stage, including the decision to return public in 2021. Investors considered Rawlinson as the company’s face – and crucial for its success.

The company – The majority owned by the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia – is looking for a new CEO, arousing uncertainty among Wall Street analysts.

“We believe that the departure of the founder of Lucid (LCID), CEO and CTO, Peter Rawlinson, is much more consecutive than understood by the market,” wrote Boffa securities analyst John Murphy, in an investor note on Wednesday, the writing of the stock to underperform. “We are now expecting the development of hold products, consumer demand be attenuated and plan that additional financing opportunities could be endangered.”

The acting CEO Marc Winterhoff, former director of the company’s operation, will try to ensure that this is not the case for Lucid.

Winterhoff said in an interview with CNBC that his goal was to rely on Lucid’s success rather than changing his course. Its main priorities include more than the doubling of vehicle production this year, narrowing losses and increasing awareness and customer technology offers.

“We have a clear vision. Now I will focus on execution,” Winterhoff in CNBC told Tuesday before talking to investors when calling the company’s fourth.

Lucid remains far from profitable, but he has narrowed his raw losses by increasing the scale and making his products more effective.

Its gross margin GAAP, which includes production and sales but does not take into account other expenses, because was an 114% negative in 2024, an improvement of 225% negative in 2023.

“We expect a significant improvement in the gross margin in accordance with what we see in 2024 compared to 2023. So we are on the right trajectory,” Gagan Dhingra, the interim general manager of Lucid, said on Tuesday.

For the fourth quarter, the company declared a net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders of $ 636.9 million, a loss of 22 cents per share, on a turnover of 234.5 million dollars.

Lucid’s first product was the air sedan, which he started to deliver at the end of 2021. The expensive car was rented for its style and technologies, but demand for the vehicle was not as strong as expected.

Winterhoff said that the company will continue to produce air sedans while it is starting to increase the production of its second product, a SUV called Gravity.

Winterhoff said that the production of the Gravity SUV would gradually be built this year. He refused to speculate Tuesday on the percentage of the production target of 20,000 units that the vehicle would represent. He noted that gravity order for customers in Saudi Arabia began earlier this month.

“We are expanding our footprint and our markets in which we are very active, then absolutely increasing the gravity ramp, which is a big goal for us at the moment,” he said when calling the company’s investors.

Lucid is also developing a new medium-sized vehicle platform which should launch at the end of 2026, which Winterhoff and Rawlinson described as essential to the growth of the car manufacturer.

While the automaker increases the production and the number of vehicles it offers, Winterhoff has said that Lucid will “double” on marketing and advertising to increase customer awareness.

“I do not plan to create a new vision or something like that for the company,” he told CNBC. “What I am still focusing on, these are simply operational subjects, such as, for example, the increase in deliveries for our customers. We will double marketing. You will see much more marketing on our part.”

The company’s sales, general and administrative costs amounted to $ 900 million in 2024, including an increase of $ 19.9 million in sales and marketing costs in the previous year. The total marketing and advertising expenses of the company was not immediately available.

Lucid air has been criticized for its lack of advanced driver assistance systems such as Tesla “FSD” or General Motors’ “Super Cruise.” Some air models cost tens of thousands of dollars more than competitive vehicles with such technologies.

However, Lucid expects to publish a new hand -free driving system for customers later this year.

What Lucid lacks in the driver’s assisted technologies, he probably compensates for the effectiveness of the batteries, because his cars are among the most effective electric vehicles in the United States, according to federal data.

Lucid tried to capitalize on its battery technologies by offering to sell them to other companies in order to increase the scale and income.

Winterhoff said the company remained in “constant discussions” with companies on the use of Lucid’s battery technology, but refused to provide additional details.