Electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors Corp. announced a net loss of $108 million or 61 cents a share in the second quarter, compared with a loss of $7.9 million, or 11 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter.
Lordstown (NASDAQ: RIDE) ended the second quarter with capital expenditures of $121 million, with $366 million in cash, down from $587 million at the end of the first quarter.
Company officials said they expect to have between $225 million and $275 million in cash at the end of the third quarter without including any funds from a capital raise.
Angela Strand, Lordstown Motors’ executive chairwoman, said limited production of the Endurance electric pickup is on track to begin at the end of September, with first deliveries in early 2022.
“We will be prudently ramping production to ensure a quality product and to accommodate supplier realities in the near term,” Strand said. “[Production] will be followed by deployments with selected early customers in Q1 in advance of commercial deliveries in early Q2.”
The company revised its full-year 2021 guidance for capital expenditures to between $375 million and $400 million, up from the $250 million to $275 million full-year guidance that it offered in the first quarter.
Lordstown officials also said 2021 research and development expenses will be between $310 million and $320 million, up from $280 million and $290 million. Officials said the higher full-year expenses are largely related to prepayments for hard tool purchases.
The company’s second-quarter earnings results come on the heels of a turbulent three-month period.
Lordstown Motors was founded in 2018. It is located in Lordstown, Ohio, and based out of the Lordstown Assembly plant, which previously belonged to General Motors, which invested $75 million in the company.
Lordstown went public last year and began trading on the Nasdaq Oct. 26, after closing a reverse merger with Diamond Peak Holdings Corp., a special purpose acquisition company.
Lordstown was late with its first-quarter earnings report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was supposed to be filed in May.
When the company finally completed its first-quarter earnings report on June 8, Lordstown filed a “notice of going concern” with the SEC, saying it might not survive the year without new money.
On June 14, Lordstown CEO Steve Burns and Chief Financial Officer Julio Rodriguez both resigned. Lordstown named Strand, a lead independent director, as executive chairwoman to oversee the company until a replacement is found for Burns.
Federal investigators in Manhattan have also begun looking into allegations that Lordstown inflated order totals for the Endurance, the company confirmed in July.
Workhorse Group (NASDAQ: WKHS), from which Lordstown effectively sprang, sold 72% of its stake in Lordstown on Monday. Workhorse received about $79 million from the stock sale.
Strand said the new leadership team has broadened the company’s strategy and that the Endurance can serve both the passenger vehicle and commercial markets.
“We believe that Lordstown Endurance can address both the commercial and direct-to-consumer segments in the electric pickup truck marketplace,” Strand said. “Initially, the commercial fleet segment is one where we have every reason to believe Lordstown Motors and Endurance can succeed in a big way. The opportunity is substantial, and it is just a subset of the overall $90 billion potential market for electric light-duty pickup trucks.”
Strand also said Lordstown is looking for “potential strategic partners” to use the company’s 6.2 million-square-foot manufacturing plant and 650-acre campus in Ohio.
“We are exploring multiple partnership constructs that include contract manufacturing; that includes licensing, in addition to producing our own vehicles,” Strand said. “Broadly we’re discussing with multiple OEMs who are interested in exploring how they can leverage the assets that we have today.”
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