Nikola reported wider losses in the third-quarter, as company executives came under pressure to respond to questions about the legitimacy of its business.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: We want to get to some breaking news. Nikola is out with its earnings report. Jared Blikre has those numbers for us. Jared.
JARED BLIKRE: All right, well, no revenue reported, and that was as expected. Though, they did announce a per share loss, and let’s see, we do have it, 117.3 million. So that is a third quarter operating loss, third quarter adjusted EBITDA loss, $58.8 million. And the earnings per share, or the loss per share, in this case, was $0.16. The estimate was for the $0.20 area.
So a little bit better than expected, a little bit narrower. And we also learned that nothing’s really happening with GM just yet. They said, quote, the contract– the– excuse me, “the transaction is not closed, and Nikola’s continuing its discussions with GM.” That’s according to the statement.
And also regarding the revenue situation, they are saying, as a pre-revenue company, Nikola believes the best way to evaluate its results is to monitor the company’s progress toward achieving its milestones. And some of those milestones are the new [INAUDIBLE] BEV prototype truck that they have a few other models out there working at.
But also really no incremental news on the fuel cell front. And I would expect some calls, some questions during that– or some questions on that during the call today, as well as some updates on anything specific, any kind of news they can give with respect to General Motors. We know that we heard from GM last week, issued a statement that they’re still in talks, and they’re looking forward to the transaction, but really haven’t gotten a lot of news since Trevor Milton, at CEO, was kind of forced out. And that was over a month ago.
Let’s look at the stock here. It’s up about 2% in the post market. And just looking at what Nikola has done this year, and now, they first announced this back in early March, that’s this blip over to the left hand side of your screen. Can see they’re still up 80% from that $10 pre-SPAC price.
But if you take a look at what’s happened over the last six months, still only up about 12%. And then over the last three, we’re going to see some losses here. If I can just get that up, there we go. Three months, we’re going to see that it’s down 50%. So quite a wild ride here for Nikola. Their loss per share was a little bit narrower than expected and no revenue. Seana.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Jared, I know December 3 is the GM– the new deadline, they can always extend it, perhaps. I would imagine Hindenburg Research, which was the first to put out that report that led to the changes at Nikola, they’re going to have something to say about this. Have we seen anything yet from them?
JARED BLIKRE: Have not. Have not seen any headlines from them in some time. I would expect them to re-weigh in on this after the earnings call tonight. So I’ll be looking out for that, and we’ll be reporting on that tomorrow if it happens, Adam.
