Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
The second quarter of the year ended on Thursday and Mullen Automotive didn’t unveiled the Fortune 500 company that will buy “a lot of” vans, as the CEO David Michery said in late March. On the last day of the quarter, Mullen said it was expecting to report “the strongest balance sheet in company’s history” [referring to Q2 2022] and the CEO commented:
We’ve made solid progress over the past quarter. The Company’s balance sheet is the strongest it has ever been in our history.
David Michery, CEO of Mullen Automotive (June, 30)
Earlier in the year, Mullen’s CEO had said the company was planning “on announcing that it is a very large company that is going to buy a lot of these vehicles. We feel that we have a great product that is going to be very competitive”.
During an interview with Benzinga in early June, Michery promised to release the PR unveiling all the details about the deal with the Fortune 500 company which quickly became one of the main catalysts for the company.
By then, the CEO said, “As I stated in our previous conversation, it’s a pilot program and I can say that we initiated that program — meaning we made the delivery — on May 12 and the customer put the van in its pilot program and reported to us that they were pleased with the performance to date and we expect to share details of the pilot program with our investors in the coming weeks so we’re excited about it. Everything has been going exactly as planned”.
When asked about the details about the deal and if they would be in the PR mentioned, Michery replied, “Absolutely, we’re actually working with the PR [Press Release] with them as we speak”.
“Everything will be in that PR. We are pretty exciting about it, we’ve been working on this for over a year. So that’s not something that transpired overnight. This has a very long time in the making. We want to do this right and we have their corroboration, they’re very excited. We started officially the pilot program on May 12th,” he added.
BE THE FIRST ONE TO GET THE NEWS
When it comes to the timeline, Mullen’s CEO said the company was fully intended in announcing by the end of Q2 2022, “I can tell you that we started the pilot program on May 12th and the results back from them are very good. […] We made a statement that we would announce this by the end…within the completion of the second quarter and we fully intend to do that”.
On Thursday [June 30], when it was expected the confirmation of the deal from both companies, the electric vehicle maker issued a press release without any information about the telecommunications company from the Southeastern U.S. previously teased.
In addition, Mullen said that — besides the battery pack upgrade to 80KwH requested by the Fortune 500 company earlier in the month— it would also need to upgrade the drivetrain of the Vans. The addition indicates a longer time of waiting and investors ask now if the deal will only be announced after these two upgrades are approved by the F500 company.
On June 23, the only requirement mentioned by Mullen for the vans was the upgrade “to an 80-kWh battery,” adding that the vans had been recalled and were already being modified to fit the specifications required by the customer in anticipation of a vehicle purchase order.
BE THE FIRST ONE TO GET THE NEWS
The stock — which is one of the most held by retail investors — raised over 15% (to $1.33) on Wednesday evening as investors were highly anticipating the announcement. On the following trading session and after no news about the deal with the F500 company, the share price dropped 30% since that peak and the stock closed at $1.02.
Recently, the company filed a form with SEC inviting shareholders for its Annual Meeting to be held at Nasdaq Building in New York on July 26. Among the themes to discuss in the meeting, the shareholders will vote to approve the increase of the aggregate number of authorized shares to 2,250,000,000 shares.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter