What happened
Shares of several companies in the electric-vehicle space have had a good week, buoyed by renewed investor enthusiasm for emerging growth stocks with intriguing stories.
Here's where things stood for these three stocks at noon on Friday, relative to their closing prices at the end of last week.
- Churchill Capital IV (CCIV), the special-purpose acquisition company set to merge with Lucid Motors next month, was up about 8.4%.
- Fisker (FSRN 12.68%) was up about 8.9%.
- Nikola (NKLA -2.41%) was up about 11.6%.
So what
For the most part, the gains posted by these three stocks over the past week were attributable to broader market action. Notably, EV category leader Tesla (TSLA 12.06%) was up about 9.2% on the week through noon on Friday; to a large degree, as Tesla goes, so go the other EV makers' stocks.
That said, there were a few news items of note that certainly didn't hurt these stocks' gains this week.
Lucid Motors brought a preproduction example of its upcoming Air electric luxury sedan to lower Manhattan on Tuesday. Several financial journalists had rides in the Air; at least one, Al Root of Barron's, had plenty of praise for the car.
The top-of-the-line version of the Lucid Air will sell for close to $170,000 when it launches this fall. Image source: Lucid Motors.
Lucid is expected to begin deliveries of the Air this fall. But it'll be a public company before then: Churchill Capital IV announced on Friday morning that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved its merger proxy statement, and the meeting to approve the merger will happen on July 22. (Assuming all goes as expected, the merger will be effective a day or two later.)
Nikola, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that it will invest $50 million to take a 20% stake in Wabash Valley Resources, which is developing a "clean" hydrogen gas production facility in Indiana. Nikola is preparing to launch electric heavy trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells supplied by General Motors (GM -0.04%), and a source of green-friendly hydrogen is key to its plan to provide a refueling network for its customers; the Wabash facility will supply about 50 tons of hydrogen per day to Nikola fueling stations in the region.
Fisker didn't have much news this week. But Magna International (MGA -1.12%), Fisker's manufacturing partner, reported that its warrants have vested. The Canadian auto supplier and contract manufacturer now holds a 7.4% passive stake in the California start-up.
Now what
Shareholders in all three companies will be looking ahead to second-quarter earnings reports. While none have yet announced official dates for their earnings reports, I expect all three to report their second-quarter results in the first half of August.
