Lucid Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:LCID) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So as you look through the course of the year, that will come on board but that’s only going to be an increase in depreciation expense of, say, 10% to 20%. The rest of that, we’re going to move to 2024 more so when the Gravity comes on board late in 2024. Gross margin, lots of activities that are going on there. We’re sitting in a good position with respect to our contribution margin, also known as variable margin, as we’re exiting the year. But there’s even more that we can do there on bill of materials. As I said in my prepared remarks, I think you’re going to see more of that action being effective in 2024. But I do see additional freight reductions and logistics cost down through the balance of the year. So those are 2 things on the variable margin, I think we’ll be working on through the balance of the year.

I referenced our 5-point cost control program. And part of that is focused in the manufacturing cost area. There’s still a lot to do in manufacturing overhead. And I already spoke to depreciation. So we’re really going to be working to get scrap down and to be looking at professional services in the manufacturing overhead area, really focused on getting that down. So those are the areas of primary focus for this year.

Steven Fox: Great. That’s helpful detail, and obviously, it’s a complex math to figure out. And then just as a follow-up, you guys were successful in raising capital this past quarter but you also diluted your shareholders, the existing shareholders by 20% to 25%. Can you sort of talk about your — how you plan to move forward on any potential capital raise relative to protecting your shareholder base?

Sherry House: Well, first of all, as we said, there’s not an immediate need to raise cash. We will continue to be opportunistic. What I’m excited about is there’s a lot of catalysts potentially coming forward here with the bring-on of the rear-wheel drive, with the scale-up of the all-wheel drive of the Pure, with the Sapphire coming out, with the Gravity unveil later this year. All of these things are going to be interim and major milestone points that I would think could be very positive to the valuation of the company. Hence, as you go further in time, if you add more shares then, it might not be as dilutive because you have these major milestone events and progress points in your business. We’ll continue to look at all types of liquidity for the business. We have available to us the ABL. We have available to us loan in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we advance our production there. We continue to have debt options as well as, of course, equity options.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Itay Michaeli with Citi.

Itay Michaeli: Just two questions for me. Peter, you mentioned seeing an increase in orders since the recent — very recent price adjustment. Hoping you can elaborate a bit more on that, and particularly in which trims did you see some of the strongest order response? And then secondly, Sherry, thanks for the color on SG&A going forward. I was hoping you could also provide some color on how we should think about R&D over the next couple of quarters.

Peter Rawlinson: Thank you. We can’t give guidance on the specific breakdown between trims. But what I would say is that we’re already seeing a very positive feedback from our recent adjustments. We’ve also seen the value of just growing the awareness of the brand. And I think also, there’s another factor here that so many people have in their minds that the is more expensive than it really was in the first place. So then you combine that with the advents of the Pure rear-wheel drive, which is scheduled for production start in September. So I think this puts us in a very positive position now. It’s all about growing wins, customer awareness of just how great the product is. We received a very significant endorsement just in the last few days indeed from MotorTrend that voted us the best luxury EV offering available in the U.S. and putting us above Tesla, Porsche and Mercedes. So I think we’re looking forward to a pretty bright future now.