Lucid beats revenue estimates, reaffirms annual production

(Reuters) -Lucid beat Wall Street expectations for third-quarter revenue on Thursday and reiterated its annual production forecast as it benefits from strong demand for its luxury electric sedans.

Lucid shares rose 8% in trading after the bell.

The company reported third-quarter revenue of $200 million, narrowly beating estimates of $198 million, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Lucid's upbeat revenue comes as it slashes prices and offers incentives like cheaper financing to woo customers who have been gravitating towards less-expensive hybrid vehicles as high interest rates pressure budgets.

The company - backed by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund - still expects to make 9,000 vehicles for the full year. This means the company would have to manufacture 3,357 cars in the last three months of the year to hit its target.

The company delivered 2,781 vehicles in the third quarter but reported a sequential drop in production, manufacturing 1,805 vehicles.

"We continue to see improvements to gross margin performance as our cost reduction efforts are gaining momentum," interim CFO Gagan Dhingra said.

It reported gross margins of negative 106.2%, compared with negative 134.5% in the previous quarter, while posting a wider net loss from a year ago.

The EV firm is still losing tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle, even as rivals such as Rivian are sharply cutting costs to turn profitable.

Lucid opened orders for its Gravity SUV on Thursday as it looks to enter the lucrative SUV market and take some market share from Rivian and EV titan Tesla.

Last month, Lucid announced a public offering and private placement of roughly 637 million shares, raising $1.75 billion that would provide it with cash runway well into 2026, CEO Peter Rawlinson said.

Cash and cash equivalents for the third quarter came in at $1.89 billion, compared with $1.35 billion in the preceding three-month period.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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