Citi cut its price target on Lucid Motors on Wednesday and kept its “Buy” rating. It’s the brokerage’s third reduction since it initiated coverage at $17 in March, and Citi is the only firm among the stock’s recent ratings that recommends buying it.
Citi analyst Michael Ward lowered the target to $9 from $11 two days after Lucid reported third-quarter results. The new target implies upside of about 139% from Tuesday’s close of $3.77.
Price Target, a sister publication of EV, archives Wall Street analysts’ research on the electric vehicle, artificial intelligence and semiconductor sectors.
Citi is the fourth firm to lower its Lucid target since the results came out on Monday.
On Tuesday, Cantor Fitzgerald cut its target to $6 and Baird to $5, both keeping ‘Neutral’ ratings. TD Cowen cut to $4 from $7 with a ‘Hold’, and Needham reiterated its ‘Hold’ without a target.
Citi’s $9 remains the highest of the six targets set in the past three months that Price Target counts. The others are Cantor’s $6, Baird’s $5, $4 each from TD Cowen and RBC Capital, and Morgan Stanley’s $3.
Their median is $4.50, unchanged by Citi’s move, and the average is $5.17, according to Price Target’s data. Six of those firms have cut their targets in the past 30 days and none has raised one.
From $17 to $9 in Eight Months
Ward initiated coverage at ‘Buy’ with a $17 target on March 18, when Lucid closed at $10.32. He cited upcoming product launches, European expansion and strong liquidity, and saw the company at a positive inflection point.
He cut the target to $14 on May 15, after first-quarter results in which Lucid missed estimates and pulled its 2026 outlook. Citi said then that Lucid’s “medium term plans are intact,” according to The Fly.
He cut it again to $11 on August 18, after second-quarter results. The target is now 47% below where Ward started while the stock is down 63% over the same period.
Because the shares have fallen faster than the target, each cut has left a wider gap. The $17 target implied 64.7% upside in March. The $14 target implied about 123% in May and the $11 target 76.8% in August, based on closes the day before each note.
What Ward Assumed in March
Ward’s March model, as EV reported in August, assumed revenue of $2.4 billion in 2026, $5.9 billion in 2027 and $9.2 billion in 2028, against $1.4 billion in 2025.
Lucid’s revenue for the first nine months of 2026 was about $1.04 billion, based on its quarterly reports of $282.5 million, $405.3 million and $350.3 million.
It also assumed production of the Cosmos midsize vehicle starting in the fourth quarter of 2026, commercial robotaxi operations with Uber beginning by the end of 2026, and funding into the second half of 2027.
The production date has since moved. Lucid now plans to start Midsize production in the second half of 2027, and said on Monday that its liquidity bridges the period through that start.
What Lucid Reported
Lucid’s third-quarter revenue was $350.3 million, below analysts’ estimates. Free cash flow was negative $1.04 billion, compared with negative $1.48 billion in the second quarter.
The company said Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) affiliate had increased its delayed draw term loan by $1.75 billion. Lucid said that and its existing liquidity should fund operations into the fourth quarter of 2027, past the planned start of production of its Midsize platform.
Chief Financial Officer Alexander De Bock said Lucid expects fourth-quarter deliveries to rise from the 3,806 vehicles of the third quarter.
Its gross margin improved to negative 73.7% in the quarter on lower inventory write-downs.
Under the amended credit agreement, Lucid will also send the PIF affiliate a 12-month cash forecast every month from 2027.
Citi’s Earlier Calls
Ward’s call is Citi’s second period of bullishness on Lucid. Analyst Itay Michaeli started Citi’s coverage at ‘Buy’ with a $28 target in September 2021, shortly after Lucid went public, and raised it to $57 in December 2021, according to StreetInsider. Adjusted for the 1-for-10 reverse split of September 2025, those targets equal $280 and $570.
Michaeli then cut the target to $45 on March 1, 2022, after fourth-quarter 2021 results, and to $36 on May 9, keeping ‘Buy’ each time.
Citi resumed at ‘Buy’ with a $12 target, or $120 adjusted, on January 20, 2023, citing Lucid’s fourth-quarter production update and balance sheet actions, according to The Fly. It trimmed that to $11.50 in March 2023 after Lucid’s “soft” 2023 outlook.
Citi moved to ‘Neutral’ with an $8 target, or $80 adjusted, in July 2023, saying it would “wait for an opportunistic entry point,” Investing.com reported. It resumed at ‘Neutral’ with a $2.90 target, or $29 adjusted, in April 2024, and kept both in July 2024, before coverage lapsed.
Michaeli now covers Lucid at TD Cowen, where he started at ‘Hold’ in March 2025. His $4 target this week is less than half of Citi’s.
Lucid shares closed at $3.77 on Tuesday, up 4.7%, and were unchanged in early pre-market trading on Wednesday, according to Yahoo Finance.
The stock has fallen about 64% this year. It set a record closing low of $2.98 on November 5.
