In this segment of Motley Fool Live, recorded on Dec. 7, Fool contributors Toby Bordelon and Lou Whiteman discuss a current SEC investigation involving Lucid (LCID 0.41%), an electric car manufacturer.
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Toby Bordelon: Back to the investigation. What's going on here? We don't know the details. What the company said. They said that the subpoena they received appears to concern the SPAC merger and relates to certain projections and statements.
They weren't clear on what projections or statements it relates to. That's very broad. My guess is what we're talking about is statement objections in the registration statement and the prospectus. There were a couple of other companies that have had similar investigations like this.
Maybe it has to do with the financial projections. Maybe they were a little too optimistic to fit into the category of reasonable or have a reasonable basis for this projection. That could be.
Maybe it has to do with claims about pre-orders, it got some speculation over that. In November, they said they had 17,000 reservations. That's up from 13,000 maybe SEC saying, "Well, we're not convinced that you actually had that number. When you put this perspective out, we're not quite sure."
Those reservations by the way from November would represent an order book of about $1.3 billion. Orders of 1.3 billion market cap of $77 billion. Take that for what it's worth. But we don't know exactly what this deals with.
We're going to have to wait and see if more details come out. But, I will tell you, they're not the only EV company under investigation right now for whatever reason. Especially some of these new start-ups.
Lordstown Motors (RIDE -1.70%), we may remember them. They were under investigation in March. They have since had the sell their factory to Foxconn. It's an old GM (GM 0.48%) factory. The company's not done. In theory, Foxconn is a contract manufacturer for their product, a truck called The Endurance. We don't know if that's actually ever going to happen. But there is that one.
Workhouse Group (WKHS -0.13%) makes EV delivery trucks that's being investigated. Remember Nikola (NKLA 7.23%), Lou. Remember that one? The semi which may or may not have been able to go uphill at all, frankly.
Lou Whiteman: Nothing is greener than powered by gravity, right?
Bordelon: Exactly. That founder was charged with fraud earlier this year. Then Canoo (GOEV 2.59%), also, I think GM has invested in them, I believe. They've got an investigation going on. Lucid joins a group of companies. I don't want to say a proud, strong history group of companies that are pretty new but they join a group of companies under investigation.
Maybe Tesla (TSLA -1.11%) too I don't think it's an SEC investigation. I think it's more of an issue, I don't know the details on Tesla that came out yesterday, but they've got an investigation going.
Whiteman: That's a whistleblower. I don't know if SEC or not.
Bordelon: Yeah, I don't know who is leading that off-hand. Yeah, that's what we've got going on. We got some investigations with Lucid. Would I buy now? Not me personally. I'm not even trying to buy without this. I'm a little skeptical over the market valuation. But without knowing the details of what's really happening, I would be very cautious.
This may not be that serious and may be very serious. We don't know. Especially with its valuation, my personal approach would be like, let me see what the details are before I get more interested if I ever do get more interested.
