California EV pure play Fisker has offered up a year-end delivery update that suggests its woes in getting vehicles to customers may be easing. But conflicting numbers in its disclosure have somewhat obscured the message.
Fisker says that its total deliveries for the year are "approximately 4,700, with the majority being Fisker Ocean One launch edition vehicles priced at $68,999".
But it also says that "the company grew deliveries by over 300pc from Q3 to Q4". And EV inFocus cannot easily reconcile these two datapoints, given previous disclosures of Q2 and Q3 deliveries.
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The firm delivered just 11 cars in Q2 as it began customer sales. That number rose to 1,097 in Q3. Full-year deliveries of c.4,700 would therefore put the Q4 figure just shy of the 3,600 mark.
But that would represent an increase from Q3 to Q4 of 227pc — not unimpressive in itself, but well short of the 300pc+ quarter-on-quarter growth Fisker is hailing.
If the firm had been able to boost Q4 deliveries by 300pc compared to Q3, that would translate to almost 4,400 cars to customers, and cumulative full-year deliveries of c.5,500.
Positivity
Notwithstanding this confusion, eponymous CEO Henrik Fisker is upbeat, as are equity markets. "This accomplishment represents substantial revenue," he says.
"As we accelerate our delivery pace in 2024, I am excited to see faster growth. "We have a solid business with relatively low overhead and an award-winning vehicle that customers enjoy," Fisker adds.
Fisker produced a total of 10,142 vehicles in 2023, which is on par with the company's most recent revision of its guidance. This target, however, followed several drastic slashes to Fisker's production goals, which it gave as between 32,000 and 36,000 vehicles as recently as March 2023 (see Fig.1).
Fig.2: Most recent production guidance met, but only after series of downward revisions
The successive production guidance revisions appear in part to have been a attempt to manage spiralling inventory levels, which COO Geeta Gupta-Fisker reported hit 9,000 vehicles during the third quarter as delivery bottlenecks took hold.
In early December, the firm's share price sunk to an all time low of $1.41, leading CEO Fisker to issue a statement that criticism of the company was "overblown". After the company announced its Q4 deliveries, however, shares jumped by 24pc overnight.
The company has also expressed confidence in demand for its vehicles which it says has been belied by its delivery struggles. To counter this, Fisker says it will announce a plan "to further accelerate sales and deliveries," in January, including a ramp-up in its test-drive event services.
Ciaran has written about finance, politics and culture. He is passionate about e-mobility and what it means for our way of life.
Ciaran has a Masters in Ancient Philosophy from Oxford University.
