EV maker Lucid surges on report Saudi PIF to purchase remaining stake

(Reuters) -Lucid Group’s shares surged 43% on Friday, paring features after doubling on market hypothesis that Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund (PIF) wished to purchase out the electrical car maker.

The hypothesis originated from an “raw” alert attributed to offers web site Betaville, utilizing its time period for market gossip. Lucid was the sixth-most traded inventory on U.S. exchanges and third high mover on the Nasdaq mid-afternoon.

The PIF, the sovereign wealth fund that owns greater than 65% of Newark, California-based Lucid, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Lucid declined to remark.

In 2018, PIF was eager about taking Tesla personal, however the deal didn’t materialize. Tesla chief Elon Musk is beneath trial for allegedly deceptive buyers along with his tweet “funding secured” for taking the corporate personal.

Lucid has been struggling to ship its glossy Air luxurious EVs after delivering 4,369 autos final 12 months.

With Tesla’s value cuts, money-losing U.S. startups like Rivian Automotive Inc and Lucid will discover it troublesome to seize share in an trade competing for shrinking shopper wallets.

Lucid’s quick curiosity as a share of its whole float is round 37% versus solely 3.5% for Tesla. Nonetheless, in greenback quantities, Lucid’s quick curiosity totals $1.6 billion, versus $15.01 billion of Musk’s automobile maker.

Quick sellers dealt a mark-to-market lack of $685 million with Lucid’s shares spike on Friday, analytics agency S3 Companions added. Losses, nevertheless, solely materialize if quick sellers shut out their positions.

“With Lucid quick sellers’ mark-to-market losses climbing, we must always count on quick protecting to start in earnest after at the moment’s short-side blood bathtub,” mentioned Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of S3, including it has turn out to be a well-liked buying and selling place.

One long-short fund supervisor who had no earlier publicity to Lucid mentioned it determined to quick it as this particular person believes the spike was solely based mostly on rumors.

(Reporting by Carolina Mandl, in New York, Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru and Hyun Joo Jin; Modifying by Maju Samuel and Josie Kao)