What happened
Shares of luxury electric car maker Lucid Group (LCID 0.83%) soared the first trading day of 2022, gaining as much as 9.2% as of 2:45 p.m. ET Jan. 3. Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are exploding, and that's propping stocks higher across the board. Lucid, fresh off a strong analyst rating that's already boosted expectations for investors, couldn't be left far behind.
So what
Leading EV makers just announced their latest monthly delivery numbers, but none could come even close to Tesla's (TSLA -3.55%) performance. Tesla didn't just deliver a record number of 308,600 vehicles in the fourth quarter but crushed analysts' estimates by a huge margin. The numbers coming in from the world's largest EV market, China, are equally impressive. Nio, for example, reported a 50% growth in its deliveries for the month of December, while XPeng and Li Auto reported nearly 180% and 130% jumps in December deliveries, respectively.
Image source: Lucid Group.
These numbers don't just confirm how hot global demand for EVs is but also put to rest concerns about the lingering global semiconductor chip shortage that proved to be the biggest hurdle for the auto industry in 2021.
Lucid, on its part, started delivering its first car, the luxury sedan Lucid Air Dream Edition, only in late October and isn't expected to report monthly numbers yet. Lucid is also considered to be one of the biggest threats to Tesla given its Tesla-beating range rating; so expectations are running even higher what with Tesla reporting blowout sales numbers. Lucid Air Dream has won rave reviews over the past couple of months, with yet another coming in this morning of January 3: Green Car Reports has named Lucid Air as the best car to buy in 2022.
Barely days ago, Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli resumed coverage of Lucid stock and gave it a price target of $57 a share based on Lucid's powerful EV technology and best-in-class range rating, among other things.
Now what
Lucid stock crashed in the month of December after a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rattled investors even as the company remained silent on the number of Air Dream cars it had delivered since October 30. Citi's fresh price target that represented nearly 46% upside from the stock's previous day's closing price and the bumper sales numbers from leading EV makers, therefore, acted as the perfect catalysts for EV bulls to bet on Lucid stock before it takes off to be one of the hottest growth stocks in 2022.
