Lucid Group (LCID) Q3 2026 Earnings Preview and Forecast

Lucid Group (LCID $3.02 -5.63%) reports Q3 2026 results on Monday, November 9, after the market closes, with the call at 5:30 p.m. ET. The stock goes into the print at $3.31, down 69% this year from $10.57, which values the company at about $1.3B. Since June a new chief executive, Silvio Napoli, has cut AMP-1 to one shift, stopped giving detailed guidance and launched a $1.4B cash plan built around selling down a pile of finished Lucid Gravity SUVs.

The quarter is unusually easy to rebuild because Lucid already told us its volume. On October 5 it said it delivered 3,806 vehicles in Q3 and built 2,954. That is 3.7% fewer deliveries than in Q2, in a quarter management had said would show a typical seasonal increase. Revenue is deliveries times what each one brings in, plus regulatory credits, and the consensus only works if each vehicle brought in about 5% more than in Q2. Our answer is a revenue miss and a wider loss per share than analysts expect.

Why Q3 will miss

Lucid does not guide revenue, so the consensus is the only bar. At $399.1M it needs more vehicles than Lucid delivered, a higher price per vehicle than it has ever reported, or an unusually large sale of regulatory credits.

The volume is settled. Lucid delivered 3,806 vehicles, and the consensus we read on October 17 came twelve days after that number. At our price assumption, $399.1M works out to about 4,040 deliveries, roughly 240 more than Lucid reported. Some of the eight estimates were probably built before the delivery release and not revised.

That leaves price. Excluding regulatory credits, revenue per delivery was $79.7K a year ago, $91.4K in Q4 and $91.3K in Q1, then jumped to $96.1K in Q2. The chief financial officer put the Q2 increase in the average selling price at 3.7% from the first quarter, from better product mix, with credits adding $25M on top. With $15M of credits, Q3 needs $100.9K per delivery, another 5% increase in a quarter when Lucid was clearing finished vehicles out of inventory.

We assume $95.0K, a little below Q2. Management said it would not cut prices to chase volume, which argues against a big drop. But selling 852 more vehicles than it built means moving older Gravity stock, and the CFO listed optimizing incentives alongside converting inventory into deliveries. A third quarter at the Q2 price would give $380.8M with $15M of credits, still 4.6% short.

Our forecast for Q3 and Q4

The bridge from Q2 is short. Credits fall by $10.4M from Q2's $25.4M to our $15M. Lucid delivered 147 fewer vehicles, worth $14.1M at the Q2 price. A slightly lower price per vehicle takes another $4.2M.

For Q4 we assume 4,300 deliveries, 13% more than in Q3. Production stays below Q2 on one shift, but the inventory is meant to be back to normal by year end, Q4 is seasonally the strongest quarter, and the Saudi government's 2026 commitment still has to be filled. The Q4 consensus of $487.5M implies about 4,970 deliveries at $95K per vehicle. Lucid has topped that only once, in Q4 2025, when Gravity was ramping and production was 8,412.

Deliveries, inventory and the Saudi orders

Lucid built far more than it sold through the first five months of the year, mostly Gravity. Production reached 5,500 in Q1 against 3,093 deliveries, and inventory on the balance sheet rose from $1.11B at the end of 2025 to $1.47B in March. Then the company reversed course: it cut the second shift at AMP-1 in June, built 4,774 vehicles in Q2 and 2,954 in Q3.

Q3 was the first quarter since Q3 2025 in which deliveries beat production, by 852 vehicles. That is progress on cash, but it is a volume story, not a demand story. Deliveries fell from Q2 even with finished cars ready to ship.

The revenue mix explains why Q2 looked better than the deliveries. Lucid reports its sales to the government of Saudi Arabia, which controls its majority shareholder, as related-party revenue in the 10-Q. Those sales were $34.3M a year ago, $74.4M in Q4, $38.4M in Q1 and $96.2M in Q2. The government has committed to buy more than 4,000 vehicles in 2026 and every year through 2032, and it bought $134.6M in the first half. Take out the Saudi sales and the credits, and the rest of the business brought in $283.7M in Q2, less than the $290.7M of Q3 2025.

The Saudi purchases are the main upside risk to our call. Deliveries are fixed, but if a large batch of Q3 deliveries went to the government at a high price per vehicle, the average could hold up better than we assume. Lucid does not split deliveries by customer, so we cannot see it until the 10-Q.

Margins

Lucid's gross margin is negative in every quarter, and the reported number is swamped by inventory write-downs. When the company expects to sell vehicles for less than they cost to build, it writes inventory down to what it expects to get, under the lower of cost and net realizable value rule. Those write-downs were $192.1M a year ago, $287.2M in Q4, $237.9M in Q1 and $299.7M in Q2. The CFO said the Q2 charge alone took 74 percentage points off the margin.

Q1 and Q2 also carried refunds of tariffs paid under the IEEPA, which the Supreme Court struck down in February: $53.0M and $9.5M, booked as lower cost. Before write-downs, warranty and those refunds, the margin was -37% a year ago, -21% in Q4, -38% in Q1 and -29% in Q2. Cost per vehicle delivered, on the same basis, was $112.9K a year ago, $126.2K in Q1 and $132.5K in Q2, as lower production spread the factory's fixed costs over fewer cars.

We assume $130K of cost per delivery on that basis, a little below Q2. Production fell to 2,954 vehicles, which pushes fixed cost per car up, but 852 of the cars delivered came out of inventory that had already been written down, which pulls it down. We assume a $150M write-down, half of Q2's. When an analyst asked whether turning inventory faster leads to lower write-downs, the CFO answered “That's right.” That gives a GAAP gross margin of -76% and -31% before write-downs, warranty and tariff refunds. The write-down is the single biggest swing in the reported margin: every $50M is about 13 points.

Operating expenses were $655.4M in Q2. The cash plan includes about $200M of operating savings in 2026, among them a June layoff worth about $158M a year, so we assume $600M. Below the operating line, Q2 benefited from a $102.8M gain as the derivative liability tied to the preferred stock shrank with the share price. That liability was $163.7M at June 30 and the stock fell another 39% in Q3, so we assume a gain of about $90M, against about $70M of interest expense on the larger term loan. We forecast a net loss of $876M.

Balance sheet and dilution

Lucid ended June with $3.0B of liquidity: $800M of cash and investments plus $2.2B of undrawn credit. It has since drawn $800M in July, $400M on August 24 and $400M on October 6 from the delayed-draw term loan provided by an affiliate of the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia's sovereign fund. After the October draw $2.1B is outstanding and about $400M remains. Management said liquidity reaches “well into 2027” and promised an update with these results.

The share count is the other half of the loss per share. Shares outstanding rose to 394.1M at June 30 from 330.1M in March, after a $291.5M share sale through BofA Securities and Uber's $200M purchase of common stock, both in April. PIF bought $550M of Series C convertible preferred at the same time, convertible into about 51.7M shares, 13.1% of the June 30 count. All three series of preferred stock accrue a 9% dividend in kind, and their liquidation preference has grown faster than that: Series A's rose from $1,350.4M to $1,470.2M in the first half. Lucid adds that growth to the carrying value of the preferred stock and takes it out of the loss attributable to common shareholders. The charge was $56.1M a year ago, $106.0M in Q1 and $224.4M in Q2: $112.5M for Series A and B, whose carrying value already matches their liquidation preference, and $111.9M for Series C. Series C was carried at $404.3M at June 30 against a $566.9M liquidation preference, so $162.6M is still to come. We assume $230M in Q3, which turns an $876M net loss into -$2.80 per share on 395M shares. Without that charge our loss would be -$2.22 a share, almost exactly the -$2.21 consensus, which suggests the consensus leaves out the preferred charge or expects a far smaller one.

What management said

“Production and delivery figures are expected to come in below current consensus estimates.”

Silvio Napoli, CEO, Q2 2026 earnings call

“Deliveries in the second half should benefit from recent product and service enhancements and reflect sequential growth broadly consistent with a typical seasonal increase from Q2 to Q3.”

Silvio Napoli, CEO, Q2 2026 earnings call

“To be very clear, we are prioritizing margin and we will not sacrifice pricing to chase volumes.”

Taoufiq Boussaid, then CFO, Q2 2026 earnings call

“The government of Saudi Arabia has committed to purchase more than 4,000 vehicles during 2026 and annually through 2032, subject to the terms of the agreement.”

Taoufiq Boussaid, then CFO, Q2 2026 earnings call

Production did come in below Q2, as promised. Deliveries did not grow; they fell 3.7%. Alexander De Bock had taken over from Boussaid as CFO by September and signs the Q3 numbers. Napoli said formal guidance would come with the full-year results, alongside 2027 targets and a mid-term plan.

How the market is positioned

• Short interest is at a high. 99.7M shares were sold short at the October 15 settlement, about a quarter of all shares outstanding and a larger share of the stock PIF does not own. It was 63.5M at the end of June. At recent volume that is 9.7 days to cover.
• The stock has fallen after four of the last six reports. The close-to-close moves on the session after each report were -3.4%, -9.7%, +4.2%, +3.6%, -1.0% and -13.9% for Q1 2025 through Q2 2026, an average of 6.0% either way. The Q3 delivery release moved it 1.0%.
• No insider has bought on the open market this year. The only purchase reported was PIF's $550M of Series C preferred in April, and the Uber purchase was a private placement. Insider filings since April show small sales and tax withholding by executives and directors.
• PIF is the majority shareholder, through Ayar Third Investment Company, and the lender behind the delayed-draw term loan, which is what lets Lucid keep borrowing with a $1.3B market value.

Our assumptions

Our downside case, $347.5M, puts revenue per delivery back at Q1's $91.3K with no credit sales. Our upside case, $403.0M, has it rise another 2% to $98.0K with $30M of credits. Only the upside case clears the consensus, and only by 1%.

Risks to our call

• Saudi mix. A large share of Q3 deliveries to the Saudi government at a high price per vehicle would lift the average above our $95.0K.
• Credit sales are lumpy. They were zero in Q1 and $34.2M in Q4. A large sale in Q3 adds directly to revenue.
• Other revenue. Revenue per delivery also carries sale-leaseback revenue, service, parts and software. Sale-leaseback revenue alone ranged from $10.8M to $34.4M a quarter over the last five quarters.
• The write-down, the derivative and the preferred charge decide the loss per share more than revenue does. Every $50M on any of them moves it by about $0.13. A small write-down and a large derivative gain could bring the loss close to the consensus even with the revenue miss.

What to watch on the call

• The liquidity update. With about $400M left on the term loan, the question is how Lucid funds 2027, and whether more PIF money comes as debt, preferred stock or common.
• Inventory. Whether finished-goods inventory fell enough in Q3 to finish the sell-down by year end, as planned.
• Price per vehicle. Any figure for the Q3 average selling price, and how much of it came from incentives on older Gravity stock.
• The Saudi deliveries against the 4,000-vehicle commitment for 2026.
• The robotaxi program with Uber and Nuro, which management said would start adding volume from January, and progress at AMP-2 in Saudi Arabia.
• The $1.4B cash plan. How much of the $600M to $800M of inventory, $500M of capital spending and $200M of operating savings has already shown up.

Sources

• Q3 2026 production and deliveries: 8-K filed October 5, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-064910)
• Q2 2026 results and operational reset: 8-K filed August 4, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-052548)
• Q2 2026 quarterly report, revenue by source, write-downs and Saudi purchases: 10-Q filed August 4, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-052606)
• Q1 2026 quarterly report: 10-Q filed May 5, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-030517)
• Q2 2026 production and deliveries: 8-K filed July 2, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-046718)
• PIF and Uber private placements: 8-K filed April 14, 2026 (accession 0001104659-26-042847)
• Term loan draws: 8-K filed August 28, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-059385) and 8-K filed October 9, 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-065525)
• Q2 2026 earnings call transcript, August 4, 2026
• Share prices, analyst consensus, short interest and insider trades: Equibles
• Forecast and assumptions: Equibles Research model, October 28, 2026

This article is our analysis of public filings and our own financial model. It is not investment advice, and forecasts can be wrong. Equibles staff may hold positions in the securities discussed.