An article about Fisker (FSRN -12.70%) published after market hours Thursday on an influential online tech news site caused quite a stir among investors at the end of the week. As a result, the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer's share price took a nearly 9% hit on Friday, during a session in which the S&P 500 index inched up by 0.2%.
Internal goals allegedly not being met
Citing internal company documents that it had been provided by an unnamed source, TechCrunch said that Fisker continues to fall well short of the 300 vehicle-per-day delivery goal set by founder and CEO Henrik Fisker.
That's the company's aim for global deliveries. Its goal for the North American market is sales of between 100 and 200 Ocean SUVs a day. The documents seen by TechCrunch, however, indicate that in December, Fisker frequently sold only one to two dozen EVs per day in North America.
The site intimated that such weak sales of the Ocean -- the only EV Fisker has on the market so far -- might have been a major reason behind the company's announcement that it will try to partner with auto dealerships in the U.S. This unexpected move by Fisker harkened back to the traditional model of vehicle sales that next-generation EV manufacturers intended to disrupt.
50 dealerships is the goal for 2024
According to Henrik Fisker, the company's goal is to attract a minimum of 50 dealerships to its network throughout the U.S. in 2024. That might be a hard sell, as the Ocean is an expensive luxury model with niche appeal at best. Hopefully for shareholders, if the TechCrunch article is accurate, the company can find other ways of boosting its sales numbers.
