Lucid Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:LCID) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Fox : Yeah, good afternoon. I wanted to ask a question. I think I’ve asked in a different way. The company has definitely battened down the hatches in terms of costs and done a lot to leverage technology and the paper start you’ve had with the production. All of that is — you should receive applaud for how you’ve reacted to higher interest rates. However, I mean, to me, it seems like the company might need to take some drastic steps in the future. Given that interest rates look like they’re going to stay higher, maybe move higher to sort of modify your ambitions. What would trigger such an event in your mind, Peter? Like it just seems like it’s a more niche-y market for a longer time for Lucid unless you can argue the opposite for, say, the next 12 to 18 months.

Peter Rawlinson : I think we’re taking a very prudent, very not view. Sherry is a great job in leading the imperative cost — cost optimization. We’re looking at all measures here, looking at our efficiency of making the cars, looking our working capital, looking at inventory all aspects of the business. We’re also pushing like crazy to improve our delivery numbers. Now I think that we’re looking at Gravity, which is going to be a transformative product just around a year from now, late 2024 with a considerably greater market, market potential than on a growing market potential in SUV. And I think that’s going to have a transformative impact within the company. We’ve always taken a veruy prudent annoyance view for cost control and cost effectiveness within the company. And all I can say that, that will continue as an absolute core cornerstone of our thinking and our very being here at Lucid.

Sherry House : And the other thing I would just say about the interest rate environment. I mean, it is known that it is more expensive right now for customers to buy ours. We know that. And that is why we are offering some support there. But there is another side to the interest rate environment for Lucid in particular. We’re sitting on a very large cash balance and we have a lot of this invested. So we’ve actually been experiencing quite a bit of interest income associated with those costs or with the cash balance as well in the interest rate environment. So there is another side to it as well as it pertains to us in particular.

Steve Fox : That’s helpful. And if I could just ask maybe a more upbeat question and I look forward to seeing the Gravity next week. But like when you think about ramping revenues from the SUV, how complementary do you think you can make it to the existing models out there, existing stores so that like the incremental cost to ramp Gravity is more on the production side and less on the sales side? Thanks.

Peter Rawlinson : I mean I think that we configured on stores to have room for a Gravity alongside it here. It’s always been a part of our sort of cohesive strategy that we’ve implemented. We’re investing in our retail network, but a lot of that is built out and ready for Gravity. And I think we also should think of the very considerable investment we’ve already made in Phase 2 of our factory in Arizona ready for the gravity. I think another point here, Steven, is just have different products Gravity is from air. When we look at cannibalization, of course, we took the decision not to just base gravity upon Air platform and therefore, result in some kind of car-like sort of compromise. We really designed gravity as a true SUV with its own new platform.

We made that investment to create two very, very distinct product lines between Air and Gravity. So I think we can really capture people’s imagination into very distinct markets from two very distinctly different products as a consequence of that.