EV maker Lucid to raise about $3 billion from Saudi’s PIF, others

(Reuters) – Lucid Group announced plans to raise about $3 billion through stock offerings, with most of the money expected to come from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), sending shares of the embattled electric-vehicle maker down 9% after market hours.

PIF, which owns more than 60% of the company, has agreed to buy 265.7 million shares in a private placement for about $1.8 billion, Lucid said in a statement. The rest will be raised from a public offering of 173.5 million shares of common stock.

The private placement implies a price of about $6.80 per Lucid share, compared with the stock’s Wednesday close of $7.76.

The move, which was first reported by Bloomberg News earlier in the day, comes as the automaker struggles with mounting losses and tightening cash reserves in a rough economy.

Lucid’s cash and cash equivalents had dropped to $900 million at the end of the first quarter, from $1.74 billion in the previous quarter.

CFO Sherry House had said the company had about $4.1 billion in liquidity, enough to fund the luxury EV maker at least into the second quarter of next year.

Bank of America Corp is acting as the book-running manager for the public offering and Lucid intends to use the net proceeds from both the public offering and the private placement for general corporate purposes.

Lucid is among the biggest U.S. investments of Saudi’s PIF, which has been tasked with driving the kingdom’s ambitious plan to cut its reliance on oil revenue.

(Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh and Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)