The Fisker Ocean electric SUV.
Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg
Wolfe Research analyst Rod Lache launched coverage of three U.S.-based electric-vehicle players. Lache panned Fisker and Lordstown Motors but feels better about Workhorse, rating those shares Hold.
Lache’s price target for Fisker (ticker: FSR) is $15. Shares were trading just above that in Thursday’s premarket action, down 9% from Wednesday’s closing price of $16.83. Fisker is planning to launch an all-electric SUV in late 2021.
The analyst’s price target for Lordstown (RIDE) is $14 a share. Lordstown stock closed at $19.20 Wednesday. Shares were down 4% in premarket trading Thursday to $18.45. Lordstown is building an electric light-duty pickup truck also available in late 2021.
As for Workhorse (WKHS), Lache rates shares Hold and has a $24 price target for the stock. That’s above the $21.04 level shares closed at Wednesday. Workhorse stock was down 2.3% in premarket trading Thursday. Workhorse makes electric delivery vans.
S&P 500 futures, for comparison, were down 0.6% Thursday morning. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.4%.
In evaluating these stocks, Lache appears to prefer sales today compared with sales in the future. Workhorse is small, but it is shipping its electric commercial vans to customers. Analysts expect the company to generate about $140 million in sales in 2021. Lordstown and Fisker aren’t expected to generate material sales next year.
Lache would be the third analyst to rate Lordstown stock and the second rating for Fisker shares. Both EV makers are new, recently completing mergers with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Workhorse has been around longer. It has eight ratings—half of which are Buy. The average analyst price target for Workhorse shares is $22.
Lache is a traditional automotive analyst. He covers cars and parts suppliers and has been ranked as one of the top automotive analysts several times. There are exceptions, but traditional auto analysts tend to be more cautious with EV valuations.
Take Tesla (TSLA)—the EV behemoth. Its shares trade for roughly 12 times estimated 2021 sales and 160 times estimated 2021 earnings. Traditional auto makers trade for a fraction of annual sales and single-digit price-to-earnings ratios. Of course, Tesla is growing rapidly. Still, seven of the 13 Sell ratings on Tesla stock are from analysts who primarily cover traditional car companies. Four of Tesla’s 13 Buy ratings are from analysts who mainly cover traditional car companies.
Lache covers Tesla, too. He rates shares Hold and has a $450 price target for the stock. Among auto maker stocks under his coverage, Lache prefers General Motors (GM) rating shares Buy. He has a $53 price target for GM stock. He rates Ford Motor (F) and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCAU) both Hold. His price targets for those two are $7.50 and $15.30, respectively.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
