Polestar shares fell as much as 24.4% in the first 90 minutes of trading on Thursday, the day the EV maker had been scheduled to report third-quarter results, which it postponed without setting a new date.
The stock plunged 27% from the pre-market high of $4.88.
American depositary shares (ADS) opened at $4.70, below Wednesday’s close of $4.71, and fell to $4.10 by 9:41 a.m. ET. ET, a 13% drop in the first 11 minutes of the session.
The slide continued and bottomed at $3.56 at 10:55 a.m., before the stock recovered to $4.09 at 1:43 p.m. ET, still down $0.62, or 13.2%, on the day and 14.9% above the low.
The decline came amid a broad market sell-off, with the S&P 500 down 4.0% and the Nasdaq Composite down 5.1% as of 2:11 p.m. ET, while Tesla fell 11.4% and Rivian 7.1%.
At $4.09, Polestar’s roughly 164.3 million ADS outstanding were worth about $671.9 million. Only about 44.5 million ADS, or 27%, are counted as free float, valued at about $182.2 million, reflecting the large stakes held by Geely-linked shareholders and Volvo Cars.
The drop erased the 7.5% gain on Wednesday, the first trading day after Polestar postponed the report late on Tuesday.
A Results Delay With No Date
Polestar said it needed more time “to conclude its quarter-end closing process” and “expects to announce in due course” when it will report select results for the third quarter and first nine months of 2026, originally planned for November 5.
It did not say which part of the closing process needed more time.
The company’s half-year report in September warned of “material uncertainty related to the execution of management’s liquidity and funding plan” that “casts significant doubt upon Polestar’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
Polestar had $887.6 million in cash at June 30, against borrowings of $5.90 billion, of which $4.96 billion was due within 12 months. Shareholders’ equity stood at negative $4.73 billion.
Polestar said it was not in default on any of its loan covenants at June 30. It has not disclosed its third-quarter covenant position.
Swedish Holding
Polestar’s only regulatory filing on Thursday concerned its corporate structure, not its results.
Polestar Performance AB, a Swedish holding unit, filed a plan with the Swedish Companies Registration Office to convert into a Dutch B.V. and move its registered office and governing corporate law to the Netherlands, the company said in a Form 6-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The conversion is part of “transforming Polestar into a leaner, more efficient organisation at all levels, including its holding structure,” the filing said. Polestar said Dutch corporate law “will be more efficient for PPAB as a holding company and for Group capital structure allocation purposes.”
Operations and headquarters are to remain in Gothenburg, Sweden. The filing was signed by Chief Executive Officer Michael Lohscheller and Chief Financial Officer Jean-François Mady.
Far Below the Spring Raise
Thursday’s price is 78.9% below the $19.34 per ADS that external investors paid for $700 million of new Polestar equity in February and March.
Those investors hold put options, written by a subsidiary of Geely Sweden Holdings, that Polestar said provide “an exit path, if needed, in three years with certain returns.” Polestar valued that support at $453.5 million.
Volvo Cars’ Snita Holding converted about $339 million of loans into equity at $16.97 per ADS in March, a price set at 95% of the 30-day volume-weighted average up to March 27, according to a Polestar filing.
On September 28, Polestar registered up to 58,613,940 Class A ADSs for possible resale by PSD Investment, Snita and Geely Sweden Automotive Investment B.V., which received the shares through a private placement and loan conversions. Polestar said it would not receive any proceeds from those sales.
The stock has fallen 33.0% from $6.10 on October 5 and 37.5% from $6.54 at the end of September. It is down 80.9% from its 2025 closing price of $21.37 and 82.4% from its 2026 closing high of $23.28 on February 27.
The shares set a record closing low of $3.38 on October 19, when they also touched an intraday low of $3.22.
Those prices reflect a change in Polestar’s ADS ratio to one ADS for every 30 ordinary shares on December 9, 2025, after Nasdaq notified the company in October 2025 that its ADS had fallen below the exchange’s $1 minimum bid price. Polestar said in January that it had regained compliance.
Adjusted for that change, the $10 reference price at Polestar’s Nasdaq debut through a SPAC merger in June 2022 equals $300 per current ADS, about 73 times Thursday’s price.
What Management Has Said
Polestar’s executives have not addressed the share price directly on the company’s last two earnings calls in May and on September 3.
On the September call, Mady said Polestar had raised $1.2 billion of equity over the previous 15 months and was “exploring any opportunity to improve our capital funding,” but that “there is nothing to call out on this matter.”
Lohscheller said on the same call that Polestar had “enhanced our capital structure through new external equity funding.”
Mady said the conversion of about $640 million of shareholder loans by Geely Sweden and Volvo Cars “further strengthened our capital structure, reduced leverage and enhance our financial flexibility,” according to a transcript of the call. Lohscheller said the first half came “during one of the most challenging and competitive times I’ve experienced in the automotive industry.”
When Polestar announced the ADS ratio change in November 2025, it said the ADS price was expected to rise proportionally, “although the Company can give no assurance that the ADS price after the ADS Ratio Change will be equal to or greater than the ADS price on a proportionate basis.”
The last management comment on the business came on October 8, when Lohscheller said Polestar had “delivered our best third quarter despite increasingly challenging market conditions.”
Sales and the U.S. Exit
Polestar sold an estimated 14,371 cars in the third quarter, up about 1% from a year earlier. Excluding the U.S., where it is selling down its last stock, sales fell 8% to 12,211.
The company cut its 2026 volume outlook in September to low- to mid-single-digit growth and said it would not appeal a U.S. Commerce Department decision barring sales of new cars from the 2027 model year. The shares closed 27.5% lower at $8.69 on September 3, the day of the half-year results.
“We will not appeal and accept this decision,” Lohscheller said on the September call.
Backing From Geely and Volvo
Geely Sweden converted $300 million of loans into equity on June 30, and Volvo Cars converted about $339 million this year, lifting its stake to about 19.9%.
On September 3, Polestar also signed a $400 million term loan with Geely Sweden Automotive Investment, of which only the first $100 million is committed.
Polestar’s $950 million club loan, which must be refinanced, falls due in early 2027.
Wall Street Analysts
Barclays analyst Dan Levy cut his price target on Polestar to $5 from $15 on October 9 and kept an ‘Underweight’ rating, according to Price Target, EV‘s sister publication that archives Wall Street analyst research on the EV, AI and semiconductor industries. The Barclays target is 22% above Thursday’s price.
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard kept an ‘Underweight’ rating the same day, saying Polestar’s third-quarter deliveries came in “below our estimate of 15,111 vehicles,” according to Price Target.
Thursday’s drop comes two weeks after shares of Volvo Cars crashed 30% to a record low on a third-quarter loss. Polestar has also ended Polestar 2 production in China ahead of a successor due in 2027.
