Observing a stock that, despite the amount of positive news it produces, never seems to catch a break is somewhat embarrassing. At the moment, Lucid is that stock. On paper, the past two weeks ought to have marked a sea change. Uber filed a Form 3 with the SEC after surpassing the 10% ownership threshold and disclosing that it currently owns 37.7 million shares. An additional $550 million in convertible preferred was committed by the affiliate of the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Silvio Napoli was appointed as the new CEO. Uber’s robotaxi order skyrocketed from 20,000 cars to at least 35,000. Despite this, the stock is currently trading at about $7, down about two-thirds from a year ago and approaching a new 52-week low.
You’ll likely see two or three Gravity SUVs on the floor, brochures spread out on a granite counter, and a lone salesperson who appears a little bored if you pass the Lucid showroom in a mall in suburban Phoenix or Northern Virginia. Long range, quick charging, and quiet cabins that feel more like a Mercedes S-Class than anything from a ten-year-old startup are just a few of the truly amazing features of the vehicles. The issue is not with the engineering. It has never been an issue. The 10-K’s harsh math, which few investors seem to be willing to put up with, is the issue.
Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $522.73 million, up 122.94% from the previous year. Before you even consider corporate overhead, Lucid is losing money on every car it sells because its gross margin is still negative by an astounding four-digit percentage. That growth figure may seem heroic. In the most recent quarter, free cash flow was approximately negative by $1.24 billion. The operating cash flow was approximately $916 million negative. You don’t quickly outgrow those numbers. These figures necessitate that someone, somewhere, continue to write enormous checks. That someone has so far been the Saudi Arabian kingdom and, more recently, Uber.
The story becomes more intriguing in the Uber piece. Dara Khosrowshahi hasn’t built cars or written autonomy software himself, but he has been methodical in putting together a robotaxi playbook. Waymo receives short-term rides. The Level 4 driving stack is offered by Nuro, a startup best known for its delivery pods. The hardware is provided by Lucid. Earlier this year, test cars started transporting a few Uber employees around San Francisco; a commercial launch is reportedly still planned for late 2026. If that timeline comes to pass, Lucid will transform from a faltering EV startup into the chassis provider for ride-hailing in the future. Whether that path is broad enough to absorb all of the dilution investors have taken along the way is still up for debate.
And the word is dilution. Tens of millions of new shares were added to the float by the April 14 raise, which included a $300 million common stock offering at $8.11, the Ayar convertible, and Uber’s follow-on check. Soon after, analysts at TD Cowen and Baird lowered their price targets. Prior to Tuesday’s surge on the Uber filing, the stock fell from $9.96 on April 2 to $6.75 by April 20. A vote of confidence typically does not appear like that on a chart. Investors seem to be doing the math in their heads and coming to the conclusion that each partnership, headline, and press release subtly costs them another ownership stake.
Nevertheless, the problem with extremely unloved stocks is that they occasionally turn when no one is looking. At Schindler, Napoli established a reputation for unglamorous cost control, industrial discipline, and the kind of detached operational focus Lucid has perhaps never possessed. The market might reconsider if he can even get the gross margin out of the basement halfway. Before it didn’t, Tesla was in precisely this kind of purgatory for years. Nobody, least of all the stock price, seems willing to respond to the question of whether Lucid receives that chapter.
