Lordstown Motors shares slump after Hindenburg takes short position

(Reuters) - Shares of Lordstown Motors Corp fell as much as 23% on Friday after Hindenburg Research took a short position on the electric-pickup-truck maker's stock.

"Lordstown is an electric vehicle SPAC with no revenue and no sellable product, which we believe has misled investors on both its demand and production capabilities," Hindenburg said.

Lordstown said it plans to refute the short seller's report and share a statement in the coming days.

The company said in January it had received more than 100,000 non-binding production reservations from commercial fleets for its electric truck.

"Our conversations with former employees, business partners and an extensive document review show that the company's orders are largely fictitious and used as a prop to raise capital and confer legitimacy," Hindenburg said on Friday. (https://bit.ly/3exILnF)

The short seller also took aim at Nikola Corp in September, accusing the electric-truck maker of fraud, leading to the resignation of its founder, Trevor Milton. Nikola had publicly rejected all accusations.

In February, however, Nikola disclosed that the company and Milton had made several statements that were partially or completely inaccurate, after an internal review.

Following Hindenburg's accusations, General Motors Co and Nikola in November announced a reworked agreement on a fuel-cell partnership, allowing the automaker to back out of taking a proposed equity stake in the startup.

Lordstown's shares closed down 16.5% at $14.78.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Shounak Dasgupta)

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