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Fisker has reportedly hired bankruptcy consultants [Updated, Fisker responds]
Fisker has reportedly hired “restructuring advisers to assist with a possible bankruptcy filing,” according to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Update: Fisker responded with a statement, included below.
Fisker has been going through a rough time lately, with its stock possibly being delisted due to low share prices. It also indicated in its recent quarterly report that there is “substantial doubt” that it can continue operating, and that it was seeking outside investment. This despite a 300% jump in deliveries in Q4, quite an accomplishment from one quarter to the next.
And not long after Fisker’s quarterly report, there was news that they might have found that outside investment in the form of “advanced” discussions with Nissan, who reportedly seek a partnership on electric trucks. Fisker did unveil a future pickup truck, called “Alaska,” last year, and that truck does happen to look a lot like a Nissan Frontier.
Fisker also recently announced two other future vehicle designs, the compact Pear and the Ronin sportscar.
Fisker has claimed that it does make money on the sale of its Ocean SUV (see our review of it here), due partly to its method of contract manufacturing though Magna Steyr. While this means lower margins since some margin goes to the manufacturer, this also helps to keep initial costs down as Fisker does not need to invest in billion-dollar factories like Rivian or Tesla are doing.
However, there are still significant costs associated with running the company, and with the direct-sales model, which has proven difficult for Fisker to scale. To the point that Fisker recently announced a retreat from the model and said the company would take on dealer partners to help sell its inventory of cars – which it estimated to be worth about $530 million as of March 1.
But today Fisker received another blow, in the form of a report in Wall Street Journal claiming that the company has hired financial adviser FTI Consulting to help with a possible bankruptcy filing. As a result of the report, Fisker (FSR) shares are currently down 45% in after-hours trading.
Update: Fisker released a statement in response, after market close on Thursday:
“As a matter of company policy, Fisker does not comment on market rumors and speculation. However, Fisker often works with outside advisors to help manage its business and assist in developing and executing strategies. Fisker is focused on raising additional capital and engaging in a strategic partnership with a large automaker. The company is also continuing to pursue its shift to a Dealer Partnership model in both North America and Europe. The leadership team is laser-focused on these efforts.”
As a result, FSR stock, which closed down 52% on Thursday, then went up 42% in after-hours trading, recovering to 22 cents per share in after hours trading Thursday, after closing yesterday at 33 cents per share. The reason for this recovery seems to be Fisker’s mention of it seeking a “strategic partnership with a large automaker,” which had previously been reported as mentioned in the article above.
Electrek’s Take
WSJ sourced “people familiar with the matter,” and while the outlet generally has good business reporting, one should also consider its history of spreading climate disinformation. It is, after all, owned by a climate denier, Rupert Murdoch, who does interfere with his media outlets to push an anti-environment agenda. For example, in the same article, WSJ falsely claims that EV demand is “sputtering,” despite that EV sales continue to climb.
Regardless of this particular inaccuracy, there are still factual troubles with Fisker, so it is believable enough that the company would seek consulting, especially after the recent quarterly report that warned this might be possible. To our understanding, this does not mean that Fisker is necessarily going to file bankruptcy, but rather seeking analysis as to whether it would be the most beneficial path forward. We’ll have to stay tuned and find out which path the company decides to take.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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