Nikola Corporation Inc, formerly known as Nikola Motors Inc is the brain child of Trevor Milton, that back in the 2020 EV mania was able to ride the coattails of Tesla success, and parlay an ocean of lies into a SPAC listing, and… drum roll please… a peak valuation of 34 billions back in the day.
You can get read Nate Anderson‘s Hindenrberg report (oh the irony) that brought the stock down to reality, and there are lots of highly entertainment videos exposing Trevor Milton lies that ultimately got him a federal jail sentence for fraud.
The company is still valued at 800 millions valuation, and keeps “Pushing the boundaries of possibility”.
Since SPAC (data in public SEC reports) net losses are rising each year in the last fiscal year almost reach 1 billion in losses:
| Net Loss | |
| 2023 | 966.282 |
| 2022 | 784.238 |
| 2021 | 690.438 |
| 2020 | 384.273 |
And since inception, Nikola has launched 1 (one) commercial product, the Nikola Tre, a semi-truck with a cab over design, with chassis sourced from Iveco. It’s available in two versions, the Tre BEV with a fully electric battery power train, and Tre FCEV running an hydrogen fuel cell power train. Final assembly in Coolidge AZ.
Why a new small hydrogen truck builder company is not 100% focusing… well… on hydrogen trucks...? Splitting its resources, between two technologies, with parts sourced from all over the world to final assembly in Nikola’s Coolidge facility in the Arizona desert is a logistics nightmare.
Well this a vestige of Mr Trevor Milton, lying, sorry hyping! the stock back in the day, with monthly products unveils such as the Nikola Badger, an F-150 inspired truck, promised to be faster than a Lamborghini yet cheaper than a VW Golf, the Nikola NZT an ATV for the explorers and the military… even an electric jet-ski the Nikola Wav.
Nikola was going to make it all for everyone. Land, sea, electric, hydrogen, you name it.
All of those concepts, renders and prototypes were obviously CANCELLED, never reaching near production status.
Going back to reality, the product that actually reached production, the Nikola Tre… the BEV version production has been halted due to pack manufacturing deficiencies detected after two under hood fires initially traced to coolant leaks in the battery packs. According to the latest filings:
BEV Recall Campaign
Nikola Corporation 10K Annual report for year ending December 31, 2023
On August 11, 2023, the Company announced a voluntary recall of its BEV trucks… The incident was deemed likely caused by a defect within components of the supplier battery pack. The Company… has determined that replacement of the battery pack in all BEV trucks is the safest, most cost effective remedy. All BEV trucks have been transported to the Company’s manufacturing facility to be retrofit with alternative battery packs….. As of December 31, 2023, the Company accrued $65.8 million related to the recall campaign, of which $3.0 million has been incurred through December 31, 2023 for the BEV trucks that are expected to be returned to dealers and their retail customers once the recall work is complete.
Nikola is still in the early stages of solving this problem, so for the foreseeable future there will be no BEV sales. This is also very concerning for the FCEV safety, because 10’000 PSI compressed hydrogen is no joke. If there is some half hasted engineering issue, things can get quite explosive.
It’s quite a bullet to bite for customers to buy products from a pre bankrupt company, plagued by a shady lying founder, fire hazard in their first products shipped, and so much unknowns about hydrogen costs, network, technology safety, and so on.
Sales have been lagging and no sign of mass production achieved.
| BEV | FCEV | Total | |
| 2023 | 79 | 35 | 114 |
| 2022 | 131 | 0 | 131 |
| 2021 | – | – | – |
Gross profitability is so far way… it’s not even a mirage. The gross loss tripled to a staggering 1.87 million per unit shipped….
| Revenues | Cost of Revenues | Gross Loss | Gross Loss per Unit Shipped | |
| 2023 | 35.839 | 249.906 | 214.067 | 1.877 |
| 2022 | 49.725 | 135.694 | 85.969 | 0.656 |
| 2021 | – | – | – |
With an accumulated deficit of 3.071 billions (ouch….), 464 millions of cash on hand, and 555 millions in liabilities, nowhere close of mass production or profitability, the company is in dire straits, at current cash burning rate it’s not possible to maintain operations for two quarters.
So, Nikola will do what it does better, sell more stock to investors:
| Weighted-average shares outstanding (3 months ended Dez 31) | |
| 2024* | 51,388,962 |
| 2023 | 35,936,365 |
| 2022 | 16,251,701 |
| 2021 | 13,581,610 |
| 2020 | 12,866,121 |
* latest data (q3 of 2024)
At current rates of operations, and at 18 usd a share (reverse split adjusted), to raise the projected 500 millions needed to reach end of year, a whooping 27 millions of new shares (reverse split adjusted) must be issued and bought by investors.
The question is, will investors back this company again, again and again?
Insiders, at current low share price are in a dumping spree, showing little to no faith in the company future.
Chief Operating Officer – Mary S. Chan sold 24 627 shares at 0.6806 on 05/03/2024
Chief of Human Resources – Joseph R. Pike sold 75 162 shares at 0.6806 on 05/03/2024
President of Energy – Dirk O. Hoefelmann sold 5100 shares at 0.6806 on 05/03/2024
Chief Legal Officer – Worthen M. Britton sold 109 980 shares at 0.6806 on 05/03/2024
and the list goes on for quite a while… please consult the mandatory form 4 SEC filings about changes in beneficial ownership of securities for the full list of insider transactions.
The biggest stakeholder in Nikola at end of 2023 is the Norwegian people, owning 107,033,812 shares, and represented by these guys:
You can’t make this up, almost as cringe as their Nikola holdings… these are the woke (sorry, meant good) people of Norges Bank Investment Management responsible for the investment decisions of the Government Pension Fund Global.
The Government Pension Fund Global was established after Norway discovered oil in the North Sea. The fund was set up to shield the economy from ups and downs in oil revenue. It also serves as a financial reserve and as a long-term savings plan so that both current and future generations of Norway get to benefit from our oil wealth.
Norges Bank
A fund worth about 1.5 trillions with equity in about 9,000 companies world wide, owning 1.5 percent of all listed companies, the 100 millions stake in Nikola represents 0,0067% of it.
Even so I wonder if any due diligence was actually made, or they just bought Trevor Milton hype train. I don’t want to discuss here the merits of hydrogen as a power source for the future. This is a long discussion on efficiency, cost, safety, infra-structure and so on.
In my mind there will be a future for hydrogen, it’s a compelling technology for big oil and governments because it sustains the current centralized model of energy distribution and taxing. And probably, for some niche needs will be the best choice. But overall with much less percentage in the energy business mix that the average Joe assumes it will be for the next couple of decades.
I’m firmly convinced that Nikola Corporation lacks technical skills, management capability, and capital efficiency (noting that it burned 3 billion dollars to ship only 245 units since the SPAC in 2020) to be a player in the so called hydrogen economy. Current shareholders will be massacred in the foreseeable quarters with losses upon losses, and dilution and more dilution. Reverse split, de-listing to OTC, and chapter 11 bankruptcy are all strong possibilities in the next 24 months.
Usually I don’t short companies, I don’t like to earn money on other people failures. But this shady company, the lying fraudster founder and complicit management, the greedy investors that bought in because “Nikola is the next Tesla” or “Hydrogen is the future” sound bytes, ignoring all the red flags. Well… I can make an exception for this one, and short it no problem.
The inefficiency these kind of shady companies bring to the market, inflating the supply chain and labor, competing for resources that otherwise could be assigned to an efficient and ethical company. Burning capital and more capital with no criteria or results. This is all typical of market bubbles, as the 2020 EV stocks mania, but the market always takes over and prevails. The market is healing, and Nikola must die to finish the process.
At the publishing of this post the stock is 19.32 (friday 15/04/2024 close, reverse split adjusted 30x).
UPDATE 27/04/2024
As expected the company has filed a proxy statement to do “a reverse stock split of our common stock at a ratio ranging from 1 share-for-10 shares up to a ratio of 1 share-for-30 shares. Additionally, commensurate with the reverse stock split is a reduction of the number of authorized shares of our common stock from 1,600,000,000 to 1,000,000,000.” – or in summary to dilute current shareholders to oblivion.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1731289/000153949724000820/n4154_x2-prer14a.htm
UPDATE 04/05/2024
So far (since October) they have fixed 1 (one) of the BEV recall, this company is a joke.
UPDATE 21/06/2024
As predicted the company approved a reverse stock split of 30:1
“At the 2024 annual meeting of stockholders of Nikola Corporation (the “Company”) held on June 5, 2024, the Company’s stockholders approved a reverse stock split with a ratio of not less than 1-for-10 and not greater than 1-for-30, with the exact ratio of the reverse stock split, if any, to be determined by the Board of Directors of the Company (the “Board”). On June 13, 2024, the Board approved a 1-for-30 reverse stock split (the “Reverse Stock Split”) of the Company’s issued shares of common stock, $0.0001 par value per share (the “Common Stock”).
The Reverse Stock Split will be effective as of June 24, 2024 at 4:01 p.m, Eastern Time (the “Effective Time”). Beginning on June 25, 2024, the Common Stock will trade on The Nasdaq Stock Market (“Nasdaq”) on a split-adjusted basis under the existing symbol NKLA, with the new CUSIP number 654110303.”
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001731289/000173128924000195/nkla-20240620.htm
UPDATE 24/06/2024
The 30:1 reverse stock split is now in effect. Yesterday closing price was .035 cents x30 split adjusted to 10.52 dollars (45% lower since this post publication recommend a short position at 0.64 x30 split adjusted to 19.32 dollars), I updated the weighted-average shares outstanding table and chart.
UPDATE 28/06/2024
Nikola has been deleted from the Russell 3000 index. The funds tracking this index must re-balance their portfolio according to the additions and deletions lists putting yet more selling pressure on $nkla.
Russell 3000® 2024 Final index Deletions List