Lucid will end its engagement with AlixPartners this month, chief executive Silvio Napoli said on Tuesday’s earnings call, three weeks after the firm’s work became the center of the company’s July stock crisis.
Shares of the Saudi-backed EV maker were trading 7.72% lower at $7.18 during the CEO’s prepared remarks.
Napoli started by recalling that the first eight weeks as chief executive were spent on the ground.
“In my first two months as CEO with the company, I spent much of my time with the people who do the work in our factories, studios, service centers, engineering labs, and technology centersm,” he stated.
“My approach is simple: listen first, understand what is happening on the ground and act with urgency,” Napoli added before stressing that “potential is not performance, and effort is not the same as results.”
“[…]Together with the board, we are confident in our resolve, and that confidence is supported by the financial and operational measures that I will discuss today, which we expect will provide sufficient liquidity runway well into 2027,” Napoli said while warning, “But let me be direct: the way we operate has to change.”
The Chief Executive joined Lucid earlier this year after a 14-month search by the Board.
“I also want to address the speculation surrounding our work with AlixPartners,” the CEO said in his prepared remarks, unprompted by any question.
The engagement, he said, has been focused “solely on supporting our cost savings plan and streamlining our operations” — and
Lucid will be “wrapping up their assignment once that work is complete,” which he placed “at the end of this month.”
The passage also closes a loop the chief executive opened himself.
In the LinkedIn post with which he personally rejected the bankruptcy scenario by AlixPartners in July — the intervention that sent shares up more than 27% — Napoli closed by writing that he looked forward to “providing a full update during our quarterly earnings call” on August 4.
Lucid‘s July statement’s final sentence read, “We undertake no duty to update our comments on this matter.”
The disclosure answers the question that has stood open since July 14: the scope.
It also dates the relationship’s end to within weeks of the $1.4 billion savings plan’s unveiling — the program the earnings release describes as “the initial output” of the company’s broader business review, with the review’s outcome still listed among the risk factors.
The report is Lucid’s first scheduled disclosure since the sequence that defined its July.
EV exclusively reported on July 14 that the restructuring adviser had been asked to deliver its findings to Lucid‘s board before its next meeting; that it was urging one more round of restructuring in the US and Europe and a narrowed focus on the Gravity SUV, with the Air temporarily held back; and that the two starker questions — whether Lucid should be taken private or seek Chapter 11 protection — were among the scenarios the adviser had been asked to weigh,
Shares fell as much as 51% to a record low that session, halted repeatedly, before the company’s same-evening statement — posted by chief communications officer Nick Twork on X, and filed with the SEC as an 8-K — opened flatly:
“The rumors are completely false.”
The statement said the company “has not formed any special Board committee” to explore the scenarios reported, and confirmed the engagement: “AlixPartners is assisting us in that and nothing else,” the firm having “not recommended bankruptcy to management or the Board.”
It closed: “We undertake no duty to update our comments on this matter.” Napoli’s own LinkedIn post went further still: “Lucid is not considering bankruptcy or a transaction to take the company private,” he wrote, adding: “The Board did not explore either scenario. Period.”
AlixPartners itself then spoke.
In a July 16 statement on its own newsroom, the firm said it “has not provided, and has not been asked to provide, any advice” to Lucid “with respect to either a bankruptcy filing or a take-private transaction,” quoting the scope language from Lucid’s statement — which, the firm’s release confirms, the company had filed with the SEC as an 8-K.
The adviser closed by adopting Lucid‘s reservation as its own: “AlixPartners undertakes no duty to provide any updates on this matter.”
Another round of restructuring lands as $71.6 million of first-half workforce charges plus the disclosed elimination of AMP-1’s second production shift; the narrowed focus arrives as a production cut, a $500 million CapEx reduction, and four ranked priorities.
Napoli’s formulation on Tuesday extends the July statement’s language — “improving execution, strengthening operations” then, a “cost savings plan” and streamlined operations now — into a scope with a completion date.
