Lucid CEO Silvio Napoli told analysts on the company’s third-quarter earnings call that Lucid, which reports from Newark, California, lost customer orders because it did not know where its own cars were. He said orders were being taken on cars that sometimes needed two weeks to reach the buyer, and Lucid then lost those orders.
Napoli was answering a question from a BNP Paribas analyst about fourth-quarter deliveries. His account offers one reason a quarter in which Lucid built 2,954 cars and delivered 3,806 still ended with a net loss of $830.9 million, according to the company’s third-quarter results.
What Lucid says it fixed
Napoli said Lucid can now see which cars are being produced, where they are being shipped, where they are being stored and when they can be available to a customer. He said the improvement is showing up month after month, and that a new commercial team with a “clear commercial cadence” is meant to sell cars the company knows will be available when the customer needs them. The call did not name an inventory system or say what the company was using before.
The earnings call also put numbers on how much stock Lucid has been working through. Chief Financial Officer Alexander De Bock said net inventory fell $156 million from the second quarter, finished goods dropped almost 15 percent, and work in progress fell by nearly a quarter. Deliveries ran 852 cars ahead of production in the quarter, my arithmetic from Lucid’s two figures, which fits a company selling down what it already had.
How a carmaker writes off cars it can’t sell at cost
De Bock also said Lucid took a $94 million inventory impairment in the third quarter, down from $300 million in the second. Under U.S. accounting rules, a manufacturer carries inventory at the lower of what it cost to build or what it can realistically sell for. When the selling price falls below the cost, the difference is written off as an expense whether or not the car has been sold. Across two quarters that is $394 million Lucid charged against cars it had already built.
Lucid cut prices by more than $31,000 on some models in 2025, and the call did not tie any portion of the impairments to specific vehicles or price cuts.
The losses and who is covering them
Lucid’s release shows revenue of $350.3 million, up 4 percent from a year earlier, a net loss of $830.9 million, and a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $1,080.8 million, or $2.74 a share. Divide the net loss by 3,806 deliveries and it comes to roughly $218,000 per car delivered, against roughly $92,000 of revenue per delivery. That is a rough division, not a per-car margin, and the release does not break revenue out that way.
Free cash flow was negative $1.04 billion, which the company says is 30 percent lower than the prior quarter. Cash and equivalents were $930.7 million at Sept. 30 and total liquidity was $2.0 billion. A $1.75 billion increase to a delayed-draw term loan with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, announced in the same release, lifts pro forma liquidity to $3.75 billion, which Lucid says funds operations into the fourth quarter of 2027. Noncurrent related-party debt stood at $1,690.9 million at quarter end, and Auto Wire has already covered who is paying Lucid’s bills.
What happens next
Napoli said in the release that “Our transformation is beginning to show progress.” Lucid says it has achieved about $0.8 billion of a $1.4 billion cash-savings target, a program that has included cutting another 1,500 workers. The company expects to lay out a mid-term plan early in 2027, and says reveal and production dates for its Midsize model are due in the first quarter, with production planned for the second half of 2027.
For a buyer, a delivery date quoted at order is the company’s estimate, and what happens to a deposit if the car is late depends on the order agreement and on state law, which varies. Lucid’s fourth-quarter delivery figures will be the first test of whether the company can now see, and sell, the cars it builds.
Lucid couldn’t find its own cars, and its backer just added $1.75 billion in credit. Is that patience, or runway for a company still learning the basics?