What happened
Failing to recover from a 2.3% dip in May, shares of Lucid (LCID 1.57%) extended their decline last month and fell 11.2%, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Besides the company's announcement that it plans to raise capital, an analyst's commentary on the electric vehicle (EV) market also motivated investors to click the sell button on Lucid's stock last month.
So what
The month began on an inauspicious note when Lucid announced a plan to raise $3 billion from two separate offerings to improve its liquidity. The first transaction would see the company raise about $1.2 billion through a public offering of 173,544,948 shares of its common stock. Additionally, the company announced a plan to raise about $1.8 billion in a private placement of 265,693,703 shares of common stock with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Shares of Lucid tumbled more than 16% on June 1 -- the day after Lucid announced its intent to raise the $3 billion.
Later in the month, on June 21, investors found another reason to pump the brakes. Dan Levy, an analyst at Barclays, downgraded Tesla (TSLA 4.34%) stock to equal weight (similar to hold) from overweight. Why would the analyst's position on Tesla stoke such fear among Lucid's investors? In his note to investors, Levy argued that Tesla would be "the long-term winner among OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] in the race to an EV world." Upon learning this, Lucid investors are speculating that this means Lucid will fail to gain the pole position, leading them to question how successful the luxury EV manufacturer will be in gaining market share.
Now what
While shares of Lucid drove into some potholes in June, it's not as if the company didn't have anything to celebrate -- namely, a $450 million deal with Aston Martin that helped prevent the stock from suffering an even greater loss in June.
With regards to the capital raises, it's unsurprising that the stock fell on the news. With more than 430 million shares becoming available, investors recoiled at the fear of shareholder dilution. On the other hand, the stock's decline related to the analyst's commentary on Tesla does not seem warranted. There's bound to be multiple winners in the EV industry, and while one analyst believes that Tesla will reign supreme, it doesn't mean that Lucid won't succeed at growing shareholder value in the long term.