Shares of the EV maker Lucid Motors have fallen back to levels seen before the electric vehicle maker unveiled a robotaxi partnership with Uber and Nuro, erasing all gains from the July 17 announcement that it would supply 20,000 Gravity vehicles over six years.
The stock dropped nearly 5% to $2.33 on early Friday, a few cents above the closing price on July 16, the day before the Uber-Nuro announcement.
Lucid’s shares had surged above $3.65 after the deal was made public, but sentiment quickly soured.
Besides the lack of details around the deal with Uber and Nuro — such as the price agreed for each Gravity SUV — the company disclosed, in a separate press release issued minutes earlier, plans to pursue a 1-for-10 reverse stock split.
Additionally, it emerged that Uber will operate the vehicles directly, reducing Lucid’s involvement in the partnership compared to initial expectations.
Since the autonomous technology is supplied by startup Nuro and Uber will manage the fleet, Lucid is not expected to generate revenue from the robotaxi service itself.
While interim CEO Marc Winterhoff dismissed suggestions that the reverse stock split was driven by delisting concerns, telling Bloomberg that the company was “nowhere close” to breaching Nasdaq’s $1 minimum bid requirement.
If a stock remains below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days, Nasdaq considers the company noncompliant with its continued listing standards and issues a deficiency notice, which can then lead to the delisting of the stock.
The shares had previously fallen as low as $1.93 in November, and briefly touched $1.98 last month — two weeks before the Uber and reverse split announcements.
Winterhoff argued that the split would enable broader institutional investment, noting that “some institutions cannot buy stocks below a certain threshold.” Nevertheless, the move failed to reassure investors.
Bank of America analyst John Murphy reinforced a bearish stance following the announcements, reiterating an Underperform rating and the $1 price target while calling the Uber deal financially “unclear.”
He questioned the viability of the plan, which calls for deploying Level 4 autonomous Lucid vehicles in a major US city starting next year.
Uber has committed to investing $300 million in Lucid, besides the 20,000 Gravity acquisition.
“We still see risk from product development stalling post CEO [Peter Rawlinson] departure earlier in 2025,” Murphy wrote in a note to clients, adding that Lucid continues to face “incremental challenges” including tariff exposure and softening EV demand.
Lucid has operated without a permanent CEO since Rawlinson’s abrupt resignation in February. Winterhoff, the company’s COO, has served in an interim capacity as the board searches for a successor.
Skepticism about the Uber partnership has extended beyond Wall Street.
Days after the announcement, CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer criticized the deal as lacking strategic depth. “It’s a dalliance,” he said, contrasting the arrangement with Volkswagen’s multibillion-dollar joint venture with Rivian, which he described as “extraordinary.”
Lucid’s market cap value now stands at $7.16 billion.
Last month, the stock was removed from the Russell 1000 Index and reassigned to the Russell 2000, reflecting its shrinking stature among publicly traded U.S. companies.
Shareholders are scheduled to vote on the reverse split at a special meeting on August 18, the company said in a new SEC filing this week.
On Tuesday, the company announced that it signed a multi-year deal with the Hollywood actor Timothée Chalamet to become its first-ever global brand ambassador.
In the second quarter, the EV maker produced 3,863 vehicles and delivered 3,309 units, with the figures showing increases of 83% and 38% year over year, respectively.
