Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated its Neutral rating and $8 price target on Lucid after the EV maker’s second-quarter deliveries fell short of Wall Street estimates, holding its stance just days after a bullish forecast from the firm had helped drive a 23% rally in the stock.
Lucid delivered 3,953 vehicles in the second quarter, the company reported on Thursday, 14.4% below the Visible Alpha consensus of 4,618 and well beneath the more than 5,100 units Cantor itself had projected.
Production came in at 4,774 vehicles, short of the 5,280 consensus but roughly in line with the firm’s own estimate of 4,689.
The delivery figure still marked a 19.5% increase over the 3,309 vehicles Lucid handed over a year earlier, a rebound from a first quarter disrupted by a Gravity stop-sale.
A Forecast Undone
Days before the release, Cantor analysts said they expected Lucid to top consensus with about 5,170 deliveries, a call that, combined with growing optimism around cost cuts and the coming Cosmos model, helped push the shares up more than 23% over two sessions.
The actual number landed 1,217 units, or 23.5%, below that estimate, one of the wider gaps between the firm’s delivery forecast and the reported result in recent quarters.
Even so, Cantor left its rating and target unchanged, a decision that rested on where the miss occurred. Production tracked the firm’s model closely, and the shortfall was concentrated in deliveries, a line more exposed to timing, logistics and the mix between the Air sedan and Gravity SUV than to underlying demand.
Cantor framed its unchanged stance as conditional, tying any revision to the updated production and financial guidance Lucid is due to issue with its full second-quarter results, the disclosure new Chief Executive Silvio Napoli is expected to use to reset the company’s targets.
Until that model update lands, the firm will hold its target.
An Unmoved Target
The $8 price target has stood since May, when Cantor nearly halved it from $14 following the suspension of Lucid’s full-year production guidance.
The firm had taken a more patient line only weeks earlier.
When Lucid pre-announced first-quarter figures in early April, deliveries of 3,093 came in far below Cantor’s 3,941 estimate and the 5,237 consensus.
However, the firm kept its target at $14 and its Neutral rating, noting that the company had reaffirmed its full-year production guidance of 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles despite deliveries being “disrupted for 29 days due to a supplier quality issue” with second-row seats.
Production that quarter, at 5,500 vehicles, had run above Cantor’s estimate. The target came down only in May, after Lucid withdrew that guidance altogether, and the firm had already trimmed its estimates after third-quarter results late last year in a steady walk-down as volumes repeatedly fell short.
Shares Give Back the Rally
The market reaction was less forgiving than the analyst’s.
Lucid shares fell sharply after the release, closing 8.3% lower on Thursday at $6.08.
The broader leadership overhaul included the departure of Chief Financial Officer Taoufiq Boussaid, unwinding much of the advance that Cantor’s forecast had sparked the previous week.
A Thesis Pinned to 2027
Cantor’s decision to hold rather than cut reflects a view that Lucid‘s value rests less on near-term volumes than on a set of milestones weighted toward late 2026 and 2027.
Chief among them is the Cosmos, the sub-$50,000 mid-size SUV whose launch and start of production anchor the company’s next phase, alongside the cost and efficiency gains the firm expects under new Chief Executive Silvio Napoli.
A European restructuring now under review, which could remove up to 40% of Lucid’s staff on the continent, is the clearest sign of that cost push.
As exclusively reported by EV earlier on Thursday, the Board of Directors has pushed for a slowdown in European expansion.
Meanwhile, and according to the same person familiar with the matter, the company aims to move with the European layoffs until the end of September.
The firm also points to a commercial robotaxi launch with Uber and Nuro slated for the fourth quarter, the first revenue from a partnership that has expanded to about 35,000 vehicles and drawn $500 million in total Uber investment.
