Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
Electric vehicle startup Canoo saw its stock surge by over 96% during the first two hours of trading on Thursday. Within the first two hours minutes of the market opening, 415 million shares had been traded, marking the highest trading volume in a single day for the Texas-based company since it went public on December 21, 2020.
As reported by EV on Wednesday, the company has started another significant round of layoffs including teams who had just been relocated from California to Texas two months ago.
As of the time of writing, Canoo shares are trading 95% higher at $0.25, resulting in a market cap stands at just about $24 million.
After implementing a reverse stock split earlier this year, Canoo’s adjusted year-to-date high is $7.08, recorded in the first weeks of the year. However, despite a surge on Thursday morning, the stock remains down about 5o% in the past month.
In its latest interview, the company’s CEO Tony Aquila reaffirmed Canoo‘s goal of “move up production” next year despite admitting that the next four to six months will be “very tough.”
The company is facing its most challenging period since its inception in 2017, marked by missed production targets, a lack of updates on several partnerships announced in recent years, the departure of multiple executives (including all its co-founders), and lawsuits filed by several suppliers.
More than 20 employees, many of whom had relocated to Texas under the company’s relocation program, were notified of their termination early Wednesday. In September, the company announced plans to move its engineering teams to its two Oklahoma locations—Oklahoma City and Pryor—and to relocate its corporate headquarters to northern Texas.
The layoffs have severely impacted key operational teams, resulting in the elimination of the entire service department except for one technician, as well as the company’s paint department — according to several social media posts.
In early November, the company announced it furloughed 23% of its factory workers in Oklahoma for 12 weeks, equivalent to three months. The former General Counsel Hector Ruiz said at the time that the EV maker anticipated the furloughs to “last for approximately twelve weeks” while asking workers to be aware “that this timeline may be changed at the sole discretion of the company.”
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
