Lucid Motors’ shares rose as much as 30.6% on Tuesday, to $8.49 from Monday’s close of $6.50, after a regulatory filing showed Prince Alwaleed bin Talal holding 5.00% of the EV maker.
The stock traded at $7.98 in the early afternoon in New York, up 22.8%. Volume reached 26.3 million shares against a three-month average of 19.1 million.
Alwaleed reported 19,513,000 Class A shares in a Schedule 13G filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, held personally rather than through a corporate vehicle, with sole voting and dispositive power over the position.
Securities rules require any investor whose beneficial ownership of a registered class of equity reaches 5% to disclose the holding, on a Schedule 13D where the investor intends to influence control or a Schedule 13G where the position is passive.
Below that level, holdings need not be reported.
Alwaleed filed the passive form and certified that the shares were not acquired to change or influence control of the company.
Entry Valuation
Alwaleed addressed the holding on X. He said his private office had filed the disclosure on a stake “acquired at a market cap of less than $2B.”
The filing itself reports a position but not a cost, making the statement the only public indication of what he paid.
A $2 billion valuation across the 390,256,808 shares outstanding reported in the filing implies an entry price below $5.13 a share, and a maximum outlay of about $100 million for the 19,513,000 shares.
Measured on the same share count, Lucid closed at a valuation of $1.80 billion on July 14 and $2.54 billion on Monday. The company has not traded below $2 billion on that basis at any other point in recent months.
The statement therefore places the purchases at or around the July collapse. A spokesman for the prince said separately that the shares were acquired during the recent decline in the share price.
At Tuesday’s high the holding was worth about $165.7 million, an unrealised gain of as much as 65.7%.
Purchases Followed Decline
The filing gives July 23 as the date the 5% threshold was crossed, nine days after the steepest intraday single-session fall in the company’s history.
Lucid shares dropped as much as 57% intraday on July 14, triggering multiple trading halts, six hours after an exclusive report from EV that Lucid‘s external consultants AlixPartners were weighing a Chapter 11 filing or a take-private transaction.
The stock closed at $4.62 and set an all-time low of $2.37. Volume reached 152.3 million shares, about 665% above the three-month average.
Chief Executive Officer Silvio Napoli said the reports were “completely false,” confirming that Lucid had retained AlixPartners for restructuring advice while denying any bankruptcy or going-private review, and stating that the company had liquidity to fund operations well into next year.
Shares recovered about 60% over the following three sessions, the largest weekly gain in a year.
Short Positioning Amplified Move
Short interest stood at 65.01 million shares as of July 15, the day after the decline, against a public float of 171.9 million, or 37.8% of the tradeable stock.
A disclosure of continued Saudi buying in a security with that level of short positioning produces covering rather than orderly repricing.
The intraday range reflected the imbalance. Shares opened at $6.43, fell to $6.22 and reached $8.49, a spread of 34.9%.
Saudi Prince
Alwaleed built his reputation on buying assets during periods of stress.
He took a position in Citicorp in 1990 and 1991, while the bank was contending with property-loan losses and questions over its capital, in a trade that became the foundation of his fortune and drew comparisons in the Gulf press to Warren Buffett.
Subsequent investments followed a similar pattern across Euro Disney, Canary Wharf and Apple in the mid-1990s, alongside luxury hotel assets including the Plaza in New York, the George V in Paris and the Savoy in London, several of which sit within Kingdom Holding Company.
He founded the business as Kingdom Establishment in 1980 after studying at Menlo College in California, and later took a master’s degree at Syracuse University.
A grandson of King Abdulaziz through his father, Prince Talal, he is also a grandson of Riad Al Solh, Lebanon’s first post-independence prime minister, through his mother.
Alwaleed was among those detained at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh for close to three months during the 2017 anti-corruption campaign, and later described reaching a confidential settlement with the government.
Valuation Reflects Five-Year Decline
The valuation at which Alwaleed bought is a fraction of the company’s peak.
Lucid ended 2021 with a market capitalisation of $62.64 billion.
The figure fell to $12.48 billion in 2022, $9.63 billion in 2023 and 2024, and $3.69 billion in 2025, and stands near $3.07 billion, a decline of about 95.1% over the period.
Share count has risen across that span through repeated equity issuance, including preferred stock sold to the Public Investment Fund, meaning the decline in value for an individual holder has been steeper than the fall in market capitalisation implies.
Financial Position Unchanged
None of the company’s operating position altered on Tuesday.
Lucid remains loss-making, reporting trailing earnings per share of minus $13.19, and continues to consume cash ahead of second-quarter results due next week.
Air sedan registrations fell to 846 in the second quarter, the lowest since the third quarter of 2022. The Gravity sport utility vehicle has become the volume model with 1,811 delivered, though drone footage over the Casa Grande plant this month showed unsold 2026 model-year vehicles remaining on site.
After Tuesday’s advance the shares are down 25.6% this year and 69.3% over twelve months.
The Public Investment Fund, through Ayar Third Investment Company, holds about 56.85% on a converted basis following a $550 million purchase of Series C convertible preferred in April, with voting power capped at 19.99%.
Alwaleed’s holding is personal and separate from the sovereign fund, though the fund owns 16.87% of Kingdom Holding Company, which he chairs.
