New strike through recall action
Nikola does not electrify – papers rush into the depths
08/14/2023, 3:55 p.m
The bad news doesn’t stop at the e-truck builder Nikola. Tight coffers, a whopping quarterly minus, a change of boss and now a recall: the remaining investors are once again throwing shares in the US company onto the market. Within a few days, the rate has halved.
The papers of the US electric truck manufacturer Nikola are once again getting under the wheels. Adding momentum to the stock’s slide is the recall of Class 8 Tre (BEV) battery electric vehicles. In the afternoon, the minus of the papers is almost twelve percent. For a long time, the paper has primarily been for investors with strong nerves. Since the beginning of the month alone, the value of the paper has halved. A share of the US company currently costs less than 1.50 euros. The share is now miles away from its high of more than 25 euros in 2021. However, at the beginning of the current year it had already fallen below the 50 cent mark.
Altogether, Nikola ordered back 209 class 8 Tre (BEV) vehicles. An independent auditor has identified a coolant leak in a single battery pack as a likely cause of a truck fire at the company’s headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 23, 2023, the company said days ago. Nikola is currently in the process of filing this voluntary recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The company has temporarily halted the sale of new BEVs until a solution is found.
The incident comes at a bad time for the company. It was only announced at the beginning of the month that the former Michael Lohscheller was leaving the chief post at Nikola after less than a year. The Opel boss is retiring for family reasons and will return to Europe, the reason given. The successor is the previous chairman of the board of directors, Steven Girsky, who was once known for his role in rescuing the car giant General Motors. It was the fourth change at the top in four years.
200 orders – cash registers
Lohscheller came to Nikola in February 2022. First he led the engine division, but then advanced to the post of chief at the end of the year. The company, which was rocked by fraud allegations against founder Trevor Milton in 2020, started production of its fuel cell trucks in late July and aims to deliver the first of them in September. So far there have been orders for 200 vehicles, it said.
Nikola recently reported revenue of $15 million for the second quarter – and is still a long way from being in the black. The loss totaled nearly $218 million over the three months. In contrast, the loss in continuing operations fell by 32 to 140 million dollars. Nikola built 33 of its battery-powered trucks last quarter. The annual production capacity for models with both powertrains has meanwhile been increased to up to 2400 per year.
Nikola had already announced in June that it would put the brakes on costs: By eliminating 270 jobs, 50 million dollars are to be saved annually. The move is part of an effort to bring spending below $400 million by next year. At the beginning of the year, according to official documents, Nikola employed around 1,500 people. It was also said that Nikola wanted to focus on the North American market. Previously, shareholders rejected management’s proposal to issue more shares to raise capital. The company needs this to ramp up the production of its vehicles.