Embattled electric truck company Lordstown Motors has enough funding to operate through May 2022 and remains on track to begin limited production of its Endurance pickup in late September following an executive shake-up that ousted the start-up’s CEO and chairman, executives said Tuesday.

The company’s new chairwoman, Angela Strand, called it a “new day” for the aspiring automaker, which raised bankruptcy concerns after warning investors last week that it had “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern in the next year.

Shares of Lordstown Motors soared Tuesday afternoon by as much as 15% before leveling off at about $10 a share, up 8%. The company’s stock price has roughly been cut in half this year, including an 18.8% decline on Monday.

“It’s a new day at Lordstown and there are no disruptions, and there will be no disruptions, to our day-to-day operations,” Strand said during a webcast for the Automotive Press Association. “We remain committed to inspiring, building and maintaining confidence and transparency in our relationships with each other at Lordstown and, very importantly, with our customers, our partners, our suppliers and our shareholders.”

The comments come a day after Lordstown’s chairman and CEO, Steve Burns, and CFO Julio Rodriguez resigned from the company after the board released a summary of an internal investigation into claims made by short seller Hindenburg Research that Lordstown misled investors.The company said the internal investigation found Hindenburg’s report “is, in significant respects, false and misleading.” The probe, however, did identify “issues regarding the accuracy of certain statements regarding” Lordstown’s preorders, specifically the seriousness of the orders and who was making them.

President Rich Schmidt said the company needs more experienced leadership. And while Lordstown didn’t say the investigation led to Burns’ and Rodriguez’s resignations, he indicated the findings contributed, at least in part, to their abrupt departures. “It was a little bit of both,” he said.

Hindenburg accused Lordstown in March of using “fake” orders to raise capital for its Endurance electric pickup. The short seller said the pickup was years away from production, but Lordstown has maintained it’s on track to start making the vehicle in September. The company on Monday said customer deliveries are scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2022.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an inquiry looking at Hindenburg’s claims as well as the company’s merger with SPAC DiamondPeak Holdings. Schmidt declined to comment on inquiry.

Strand, who was Lordstown’s lead independent director, is overseeing its transition until a permanent CEO is identified, according to the company.
Schmidt reconfirmed Lordstown is actively raising additional capital, which the company announced plans to do in May. He also said Lordstown is no longer working with Camping World on EV products and solutions for the RV marketplace, citing a need to focus on the Endurance.

“We’re just focused currently on the Endurance truck,” he said. “That’s our next goal for the next three months is to make sure we hit our production targets and stay within our budgets and drive forward to getting the vehicles ready for the market.”

[DETROIT — Lordstown Motors has "firm" and "binding" orders for the first two years of production of its electric pickup truck, the startup's president says, sending shares up 6.4% a week after saying it had no binding orders for the vehicle.

"Currently, we have enough orders for production for '21 and '22," President Rich Schmidt said at an Automotive Press Association event in Detroit. "Those are firm orders we have for those two years."

"I don't know the exact facts of the legal aspect of that, but they are basically binding orders that are committed here in the last two weeks, reconfirmed orders," he added, when asked if they were binding orders. "They're pretty solid, and I think that's on the light side or conservative side."

Lordstown's shares, which shot up as much as 15%, were up 7.8% at $9.98 a share in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq.

In March, Lordstown's shares slumped after investment research firm Hindenburg Research disclosed it had taken a short position on the stock, saying the company had misled consumers and investors about its pre-orders for the Endurance truck that Lordstown initially said were worth $1.4 billion.

The Ohio company subsequently said the orders were not binding and production would be half what had been expected, and on June 8, when it warned it was running out of cash, disclosed in a regulatory filing it had no binding orders or commitments from customers and was at risk as a going concern.

On Monday, Lordstown announced that Chief Executive Steve Burns and its chief financial officer had resigned and acknowledged it overstated the quality of pre-orders in the trucks.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has asked the company for information related to the truck pre-orders. Schmidt declined to comment when asked for an update on the SEC inquiry on Tuesday.

Hindenburg founder Nathan Anderson could not immediately be reached for comment.

Schmidt also said Lordstown will seek additional funds from General Motors and other early investors. GM owns a small stake in the startup.

In a statement, GM said, "we are comfortable with our current relationship with LMC but we are willing to listen to proposals that make sense for both parties.”

Lordstown's plant can currently build at a rate of 20,000 vehicles per year without more investment, and the additional funds would allow it to expand beyond that level, said Schmidt, adding that the company has $400 million in the bank.

Angela Strand, who took over as executive chairman on Monday after Burns' resignation, said in an opening statement during the webcast that the company's plan remains to start limited production of the truck in late September.

The Endurance will be designed as a work truck and start at $55,000, Schmidt said.

He made a pitch for investors to put capital into Lordstown before it begins production of the truck, saying those who wait will have "missed the big jump."

Ford Motor Co is also targeting commercial customers with the electric version of its F-150 truck, the F-150 Lightning, which will launch next spring. A "commercial base" version will start at just below $40,000 before tax credits, while an XLT model that aligns with the best-selling gas version will start at almost $53,000.

The Lordstown Motors saga continued Thursday with a new regulatory filing acknowledging that the electric startup does not actually have any binding orders for its trucks, contradicting — in the space of 48 hours — company President Rich Schmidt's assurances that the company had essentially already sold all of the vehicles it plans to build in 2021 and 2022.

"Although these vehicle purchase agreements provide us with a significant indicator of demand for the Endurance, these agreements do not represent binding purchase orders or other firm purchase commitments," the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In other words, when Schmidt told the Automotive Press Association in Detroit on Tuesday that the company had "enough orders for production for '21 and '22" and that those orders were "firm," he was, at best, just wrong. "I don't know the exact facts of the legal aspect of that," he added.

That last bit is now painfully obvious.

On Monday, just days after the company said it may not have enough money to stay in business over the next year, Chief Executive Steve Burns and Chief Financial Officer Julio Rodriguez resigned. The resignations followed the company's reports of conclusions from an internal investigation into claims made by short-seller Hindenburg. Hindenburg, which took a short position on Lordstown shares in March, alleged that the company had misled consumers and investors.

Although, Lordstown declined Hindenburg's accusations of overstating the viability of its technology and misleading investors about production plans, it has acknowledged that it overstated the quality of pre-orders for its electric truck.

In a filing on Thursday, the company said it pushed off its annual meeting of stockholders until Aug. 19 from the previously scheduled June 17.

LORDSTOWN, Ohio — A few things quickly became apparent as we were shuffled through a tour of Lordstown Motors' plant in Northeast Ohio near the border with Pennsylvania. First, the hopeful electric truck maker got a steal of a deal when it purchased its 6.2-million-square-foot factory from General Motors for a reported $20 million. Second, Lordstown Motors hired a gaggle of talented and capable engineers to design its first product, the Endurance electric pickup truck. And third, it's going to take a herculean effort and a lot of money to get from where the company is today with its assembly plant and pickup truck to where it wants to be before the end of 2021.

The Endurance trucks that Lordstown had on display for a brief ridealong were still in a beta stage. The bodywork was stamped and welded up in its factory, and their motors and batteries were assembled onsite. But they are very much still a work in progress. The trucks' interiors were assembled from molded bits and pieces but were clearly not production-quality items. There was no interior weatherstripping, and the truck I rode in had its headrest installed backwards. The guts — including 6,048 individual battery cells and all four hub motors — are said to be pretty much finalized.

A brief ride in an Endurance beta truck proved that, massive unsprung mass aside, there are indeed merits to the hub-mounted motor arrangement. The truck's center of gravity is extremely low; lower even than many competing electric vehicles that have motors or transaxles mounted above the level of the axles. This arrangement means there is less body roll during hard cornering. Because each wheel has its own motor, engineers can dial in whatever torque vectoring algorithms they want. Unfortunately, we weren't tossed the keys for our own stint behind the wheel, but we did experience a couple of 0-45-mile-per-hour acceleration runs, a slalom, a 45-mph lane change and a tight-turn course designed to show another benefit of the hub motors: an excellent turning radius.


PlayThe Endurance truck feels quick, though we didn't get a straight answer as to whether or not they were running at full power and with final software. The massive parking lot where the demonstration took place was heavily pockmarked and full of bumps and lumps, but the truck glided along just fine. The truck we rode in had 20-inch rims with 275/R60 tires, but again we couldn't verify if those were production-spec.

A stroll through the painting and finishing area of the plant revealed some context on markets where Lordstown hopes to play. Forest Service Green, Municipal Yellow and a very police-appropriate blue were all front and center. Of course, white, black, shades of gray and one bright red were also accounted for and likely to be specced by regular consumers, but there certainly seems to be an emphasis on fleet sales.

Executive Chairwoman Angela Strand, appointed after Steve Burns resigned as Chief Executive Officer following the revelation that "periodic disclosures regarding preorders" were in some cases "inaccurate," told us that Lordstown "will be first to market with a full-size all-electric pickup truck." Executives and engineers at the company we spoke with seem to legitimately believe that their goals to have at least small-scale Endurance production underway before the end of the year, but a lot of work remains to reach that lofty goal. For instance, a brand-new electric motor production line has yet to be installed — best we could tell, motors are currently assembled mostly by hand — and some equipment isn't even yet onsite. The panels we witnessed being stamped were loaded into a massive press by hand, not by robot. And the final mating process of the body and chassis is not yet fully automated.



Besides finishing the factory preparation and advancing out of beta and into preproduction and final production, there are looming questions about the company's current financial position. There's also the matter of preorders, or rather how firm those orders may or may not be. According to Lordstown in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, "Although these vehicle purchase agreements provide us with a significant indicator of demand for the Endurance, these agreements do not represent binding purchase orders or other firm purchase commitments."

Company officials were not willing to add anything more to the official statements that have already been made regarding its financial status or the number of preorders for the Endurance. They would only say that they are "evaluating multiple potential sources of funding" in addition to evaluating strategic partners and "continuing our due diligence" in pursuit of a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.



Another intriguing potential future product was revealed on a mud-filled grassy area on the far end of the factory grounds. A military prototype with six seats and a full roll cage painted in a familiar shade of Army green was already covered in mud by the time we strapped ourselves in the front passenger seat. Driver Matt Blanchard, who also piloted Lordstown's Baja prototype that was entered in the San Felipe 250 off-road race but failed to finish, said the basic chassis, battery pack and hub motors were all taken from the Endurance truck. Its suspension was modified for greater travel and strength. We sat back and got soaked as the prototype soared over jumps, bounded and power-slid across muddy embankments and even dove headfirst into 30 inches of water, coming out filthy but otherwise unscathed.




What does all of this mean for the future of Lordstown Motors? We honestly don't know. But we can say that our brief interaction with the Endurance pickup suggests it could be a viable electric truck, albeit after quite a bit more work is done. One way or the other, we're happy to be buckled up and along for the ride, even if it's a bit bumpy.

DETROIT — Lordstown Motors, which previously warned it needs to raise additional funding, hung the "open for business" sign on its northeastern Ohio plant on Wednesday, saying it was in talks to build vehicles for other automakers or lease space in the factory.

Shares of the electric vehicle startup, which also said it will begin limited production of its Endurance pickup truck in late September, rose 6.1% in after-hours trading.

"We are exploring multiple partnership constructs. That includes contract manufacturing, that includes licensing," Chairwoman Angela Strand said on a conference call with analysts. "We're discussing with multiple (automakers) who are interested in exploring how they can leverage the assets that we have."

"This is a critical, strategic pivot for us," she added. "A decision that we believe will lead to significant new revenue opportunities."

Lordstown, which also on Wednesday announced a second-quarter loss, said its plant in the northeastern part of the state is ready and that retooling of stamping, assembly, body and paint shops has been completed. It also said the electric battery line is fully commissioned.

Lordstown will begin shipping the Endurance to select early customers in the first quarter of next year, followed by wider commercial deliveries in the second quarter, she said. Production will increase steeply in the second half of 2022.

Strand said while Lordstown will initially target commercial customers, the Endurance also will appeal to consumers.

Lordstown President Rich Schmidt said the Endurance uses only 30% of the plant's 6.2 million square feet, so there is room for others to build vehicles there or for Lordstown to build them. Other options could include selling batteries or EV platforms to other automakers, he said.

Lordstown on Wednesday said it lost just over $108 million, or 61 cents a share, in the second quarter.

The company had $366 million in cash and equivalents at the end of the quarter, and expected to end the third quarter with liquidity of between $225 million and $275 million excluding any funds from a capital raise.

Last month, Lordstown said a hedge fund had committed to purchasing up to $400 million of the startup's shares over a three-year period. Executives said on Wednesday that Lordstown was exploring other financing options, including debt.

Lordstown also will begin earning environmental credits it can sell to other automakers, interim Chief Financial Officer Becky Roof said. It has a deal with minority shareholder General Motors Co that allows the No. 1 U.S. automaker to buy those credits during the first three full production years at a discount to fair market value.

Lordstown faces heightened scrutiny from federal prosecutors in Manhattan and officials with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission related to its merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) and statements it previously made about preorders for its vehicles.

In March, Lordstown's shares slumped after Hindenburg Research disclosed it had taken a short position on the stock, saying the company had misled investors.

An internal investigation into Hindenburg's claims in June found that Lordstown had overstated the quality of preorders. Lordstown also announced at the same time the resignation of founder and chief executive Steve Burns, the company's largest shareholder.

The company named Daniel Ninivaggi as its new CEO Thursday morning, effective immediately. Lordstown (ticker: RIDE) shares are up 25% to $6.88 in early trading. The S&P 500 is down 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 0.2%.

Ninivaggi takes over from board chair Angela Strand, who ran the company after the departure of Steve Burns in June. Burns left shortly after the company received a “going concern” warning from its auditor. That warning, essentially, means the company might not have the capital required to keep operating without a significant change.

The company is also being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department regarding the handling of its SPAC merger and recording of vehicle preorders. Vehicle preorders were an issue raised in a negative research report by a short seller in March. The short seller’s report prompted an internal investigation whose findings were published in June. The company has disputed claims made in the short seller’s report.

Lordstown stock hit a 52-week low on Aug. 19. Shares have rallied off the bottom and, including Thursday’s gains, are up about 44% from a nadir of $4.77 a share. Still, shares are off about 80% from their 52-week high of almost $32.

Ninivaggi is the former CEO of Icahn Enterprises (IEP) and has served in a “variety of senior leadership positions in the automotive and transportation industries,” according to the company. His previous automotive jobs include stints at parts suppliers Lear (LEA) and Federal-Mogul. He also serves on the board of Garrett Motion (GTX), the turbocharger business spun out of Honeywell International (HON).

“I believe the demand for full-size electric pickup trucks will be strong and the Endurance truck…has the opportunity to capture a meaningful share of the market,” said Ninivaggi. The Endurance, Lordstown’s first product, is due to start production in the coming months. “I look forward to working with the talented Lordstown management team, our suppliers and other partners to bring the Endurance to market and maximize the value of our assets.”

Ninivaggi will have a tough job. Wall Street has soured on Lordstown stock. Only one out of eight analysts, or 13%, rates shares Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for small-capitalization stocks is about 60%. What’s more, 50% rate shares Sell. The average price target of the sell-rated analysts is about $1.55 a share.

Stock in electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors is rising because the company might sell its sole manufacturing facility to raise needed cash.

Lordstown (ticker: RIDE) stock was up about 6% in premarket trading. S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were both up about 0.4%.

Bloomberg reported that Hon Hai Precision Industry (2317.Taiwan)–better known as iPhone assembler Foxconn–is interested in the plant. Neither company was immediately available to comment.

There are two reasons it is a big deal.

First, the sale would bring in cash for Lordstown. The company has said it needed to raise more capital to bring its electric truck, the Endurance, to market. Sales are expected to start soon.

The company raised about $600 million in a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company that closed in October 2020. At the end of the second quarter, the company’s cash balance was down to about $370 million. It’s a sizable sum, but car startups need a lot of money. Another EV startup, Fisker (FSR), had about $1 billion on its balance sheet at the end of the second quarter.

Second, Foxconn is a significant partner. It wants to build cars. In fact, Foxconn is working with Fisker on an electric vehicle. Fisker will design and sell the vehicle, while Foxconn will assemble it. Foxconn sees EV assembly as a growth business for it in coming years.

By selling the plant, Lordstown might morph its business model into one along the lines of Fisker’s. Fisker plans to outsource its manufacturing—at least early in its life as a company—to Magna International (MGA) and Foxconn. Until now, Lordstown, looked more like a traditional auto maker because it has a big manufacturing facility.

If a sale happens, Lordstown will have to pay for vehicle assemble, but it will have more cash and less spending requirements. Foxconn, for its part, would have a car-assembly facility it could use to expand its new business.

The Ohio plant Lordstown operates in was bought from General Motors (GM) back in mid-2019. The plant was idle at the time of the sale.
Lordstown investors have had a tough go lately. Questions about cash and what share of the vehicles preordered will actually be sold have punished the stock. The stock is down about 37% over the past six months. Coming into Thursday trading, shares were down 63% year to date.

iPhone assembler Foxconn is buying an automotive factory from struggling EV startup Lordstown Motors for around $230 million, the companies announced late Thursday. Foxconn says it has agreed to build Lordstown Motors’ electric pickup truck at the plant, which is where General Motors used to make the Chevrolet Cruze, and that the startup will remain a tenant there. Lordstown Motors will also “agree to provide Foxconn with certain rights with respect to future vehicle programs.”

The deal gives the Taiwanese conglomerate its first automotive factory, and a significant new presence in the United States — one that the company will use as it tries to establish itself as a global electric vehicle automaker. Foxconn previously announced a massive LCD panel factory in Wisconsin but has failed to live up to the myriad promises it made to that state.

As part of the deal, Foxconn is also buying $50 million worth of Lordstown Motors shares. The startup has recently admitted it needs to raise money quickly in order to survive, despite going public last year. News of the factory sale was first reported by Bloomberg early Thursday.

Lordstown Motors bought the 6.2-million-square-foot facility from General Motors in 2019 shortly after the Detroit automaker closed it down — a decision that drew the ire of then-president Trump. The startup previously announced in August that it was planning to rent out space at the factory in an effort to make money amid a serious cash crunch.

Since buying it, Lordstown Motors has put about $240 million worth of work into getting the factory ready to build its electric pickup truck, the Endurance. A spokesperson for Lordstown Motors declined to comment. Foxconn did not respond to a request for comment.

When GM sold the factory to Lordstown Motors, Trump praised the deal as “GREAT NEWS FOR OHIO!” But the startup — which was founded by the former CEO of Workhorse, another struggling EV startup — has run into an incredible amount of trouble ever since, despite going public and raising hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020. Lordstown Motors’ CEO was forced out earlier this year after he was caught lying about the veracity of the preorders for its truck. The startup has lowered its initial production goals for that truck, too. Both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have launched probes into Lordstown Motors, and the company has said it only has enough money to survive through mid-2022.

Foxconn has spent much of the last year talking about expanding into electric vehicles as a way to diversify away from consumer electronics. It has struck deals with the likes of Geely, which is China’s largest private automaker, as well as Fisker Inc., a California EV startup that has yet to make an electric vehicle. Foxconn has also developed its own electric vehicle platform that it intends to sell to other automakers.

In March, Foxconn said it would reveal the location where it would build EVs with Fisker Inc. by July, but that self-imposed deadline came and went. The company had considered using the mostly empty complex it built in Wisconsin — another project that the Trump administration touted highly — but Fisker founder Henrik Fisker said he didn’t want to build his cars in a state that wouldn’t allow him to sell directly to consumers.

Foxconn said Thursday that, as part of the deal, Fisker Inc. will be allowed to make vehicles with the Taiwanese conglomerate in the Ohio factory.

Lordstown Motors, the EV startup that bought GM’s Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio in 2019 only to sell it to Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn two years later, may start shipping its first electric trucks in 2022.

The announcement doesn’t come from Lordstown Motors but Foxconn chairman Young Liu, who told Nikkei Asia that the Endurance electric pickup truck would start deliveries in the second half of the year.

“Our self-developed electric bus will hit the road in Kaohsiung (southern Taiwan), electric pick-ups made in cooperation with Lordstown will begin shipping in the second half of this year.”

While the part about the electric bus concerns the Taiwanese market, the bit about electric pickups refers to the Lordstown Endurance and its US market availability.

Before we go on, we should mention that the $230 million plant sale agreement between Lordstown Motors and Foxconn signed in Q4 2021 was tied to the Taiwanese company commitment to assume production of the Endurance electric pickup truck.


Furthermore, the two parties agreed to pursue a joint venture agreement to design and develop vehicle programs for the commercial market in North America and internationally using Foxconn’s Mobility in Harmony (MIH) open EV platform.

This explains why Foxconn’s chairman is talking about the start of deliveries for the Endurance pickup and not some Lordstown executive—it also explains who's calling the shots now at the Lordstown plant. His statement aligns with information released by Lordstown Motors regarding a delay of the Endurance pickup’s launch for Q3 2022.

In the interview with Nikkei Asia, Liu also said that Foxconn believes the next two big trends in tech will be electric vehicles and metaverse. Regarding the former, Foxconn has unveiled its first EV concepts in October 2021 under the Foxtron brand, a joint venture with Taiwan’s biggest carmaker Yulon Motor.It is understood that Foxconn will build production versions of the said EV concepts for automotive customers rather than under its own automotive brands. Whether the Taiwanese company will build any of these MIH platform-based EVs at its newly acquired plant in Lordstown, Ohio is anyone's guess at the moment.

LORDSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – Pre-production of the Endurance is now underway at Lordstown Motors.

The automaker posted on its Facebook page on Friday that due to the collaboration with Foxconn, the pre-production vehicles are rolling off the assembly line.

The pick-up truck will now be put into test driving environments to refine its durability and maneuverability.

Embattled electric vehicle start-up Lordstown Motors expects to produce and sell up to only 3,000 vehicles through next year, the company announced Monday.

The plans include 500 vehicles this year, with production slated to begin in the third quarter — a year later than expectations cited by Lordstown when it went public through a special purpose acquisition company in October 2020.

The total sales and production figures also are far below the amount former management sold investors on in the runup to the public listing. Lordstown initially expected to build 2,000 Endurance pickups in its first year, followed by 32,000 units during the first full year of production.

Shares of the pre-revenue company plunged as much as 28% during Monday afternoon trading. The stock closed Monday at $2.57 a share, down by 20%.

Foxconn invests in Lordstown Motors, company will deliver first all-electric truck next yearLordstown Motors announced the production forecast as part of reporting its fourth-quarter results. Net loss widened to $81.2 million, and the automaker incurred a total of $115 million in expenses.

Company executives said they need to raise about $250 million this year for its business operations, including tooling to produce the vehicle.

Lordstown CEO Dan Ninivaggi said the company will initially only sell vehicles to a modest number of pre-selected businesses. It said it still needs some regulatory certifications before it can put vehicles on sale.

The aspiring automaker initially planned to produce the Endurance pickup internally at an Ohio plant it purchased from General Motors.

But following an executive shake-up and amid ongoing concerns that the company could run out of cash, Lordstown announced a deal to sell the plant to iPhone maker Foxconn for $230 million in November. That deal, which includes Foxconn producing the Endurance pickup, has not been finalized.

Lordstown and Foxconn also are in negotiations about a potential joint development of future vehicles. The company characterized those talks Monday as “an important component” for Lordstowns’ future success.

“We need to bring that to a conclusion, and I’m hopeful we’ll get there,” Ninivaggi said Monday.

General Motors sold its stake in Lordstown Motors during the fourth quarter following an undisclosed lock-up period, the Detroit automaker confirmed Tuesday.

GM owned 7.5 million shares of common stock in Lordstown as part of a SPAC deal that took the Ohio-based automaker public in October 2020. The shares had an initial equity value of $75 million. They were given in exchange for in-kind contributions and $25 million in cash GM’s stake was less than 5%.

The disclosure comes after Lordstown on Monday announced underwhelming plans to produce and sell up to only 3,000 vehicles through next year, including 500 in 2022. Both are far below the amount former management sold investors on in the runup to the public listing.

GM spokesperson Jim Cain declined to disclose exact timing of the open market sales or the net proceeds, saying the total wasn’t material.

The share sale was somewhat expected. GM’s involvement in the company was a goodwill gesture to assist in getting the Lordstown Assembly plant back up and running following the automaker ending production there in 2019.

Lordstown’s future is at stake as it burns through cash and faces a crucial deal deadline next week

Mon, May 9 202

Struggling electric vehicle start-up Lordstown Motors said it’s on track to begin production of its Endurance pickup in the third quarter, about a year later than originally expected. Yet even if it hits that start date, the company expects to lose money on every one of the roughly 500 trucks it hopes to ship by year-end.

Whether Lordstown will survive long enough to face that challenge is still in question. The company’s financial future hangs on a deal it struck last September to sell its Ohio factory to Taiwanese contract manufacturer Hon Hai Technology Group, better known as Foxconn. Under the deal’s terms, it must close by May 18. (The original terms required the deal to close by May 14, but the parties agreed to a four-day extension, Lordstown said Monday.)

If the deal doesn’t happen -- as of Monday morning, it wasn’t done -- Lordstown will be required to refund the $250 million in down payments made by Foxconn over the last several months.

A refund would deplete nearly all of the aspiring truck maker’s remaining cash. Lordstown had $203.6 million in cash as of March 31 and received an additional $50 million from Foxconn in April. Nearly all of that will have to be repaid if the deal doesn’t happen.

If the deal does close, Foxconn will make a final payment of $30 million, plus an additional payment of about $27 million to reimburse some of Lordstown’s costs. But that will still leave Lordstown short of the cash it needs to ramp up production of the Endurance.

Assuming a successful closing with Foxconn, Lordstown will likely have to raise an additional $150 million or so by year-end, Chief Financial Officer Adam Kroll said Monday.

The news was part of Lordstown’s first-quarter earnings update. It reported a net loss of $89.6 million for the first quarter, or 46 cents per share, versus its $125.2 million loss (72 cents per share) in the first quarter of 2021. Revenue then and now was zero, as the company isn’t yet shipping vehicles.

Lordstown’s operations used up net $69 million in cash in the first quarter, including $21.9 million in capital expenses on tooling and related costs for its assembly line. Its rate of cash burn is likely to accelerate as it gets closer to the start of production of the Endurance.

Lordstown’s stock fell nearly 19% in early trading after the news was released to a new all-time low of $1.55. The shares recovered somewhat as the day went on, ending Monday’s session at $1.78, down 6.5%.

Lordstown Motors shares surge as it closes deal with Foxconn

May 11, 2022

May 11 (Reuters) - Lordstown Motors Corp said it has completed a deal to sell certain assets to Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, clinching funds essential for the production of its Endurance electric pickup truck.

The struggling EV maker last year entered the agreement with Foxconn for the sale of its Ohio facility for $230 million, excluding certain assets such as the hub motor assembly and battery pack lines.

On Wednesday, Lordstown said it will get $260 million of proceeds, including the reimbursement of certain operating and expansion costs.

The company said on Monday it needed $150 million in addition to the proceeds from the asset purchase deal to put its Endurance electric pickup truck into production.

Under the agreement, the two companies would create a joint venture to make future vehicles, with Lordstown owning a 45% stake and Foxconn owning the rest.

Lordstown President Edward Hightower told Reuters Wednesday that with the sale of the Ohio factory to Foxconn and the establishment of a product development joint venture with Foxconn, Lordstown can raise additional cash after it delivers the first Endurance trucks to customers.

The product development venture with Foxconn will allow Lordstown and Foxconn together to offer vehicle development and a U.S. manufacturing base to international automakers that need both, Hightower said.