EV Maker Fisker Reports Bleak Outlook in 2023 Earnings Call

• The electric-vehicle startup manufacturer Fisker announced a bleak outlook in an earnings call, with the company citing “substantial doubt about Fisker’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
• The company, which said it delivered 4929 Fisker Ocean EVs (pictured above) to customers in 2023, confirmed it is in talks with a large automaker.
• The company announced a mass layoff of 15 percent of its workforce and put a pause on future product plans for vehicles including the the Pear SUV and the Alaska truck.

The fledgling electric-car startup Fisker appears to be struggling, based on its 2023 fourth-quarter and full year earnings call on Thursday. The company reported that there is “substantial doubt about Fisker’s ability to continue as a going concern,” citing cash on hand as an issue.

Despite $200 million in revenue in the fourth quarter, underperforming sales led to $463 million in net losses over the same period.

As a result, the automaker announced it will lay off 15 percent of its workforce as one way to cut costs. There may be more layoffs coming to Fisker in the future as well.

New Dealer Model Has to Work

“To the extent Fisker’s current resources are insufficient to satisfy its requirements over the next 12 months, the company will need to seek additional equity or debt financing, and there can be no assurance that Fisker will be successful in these efforts,” the company said. A big part of Fisker’s plan is “highly dependent” on a successful transition to the brand’s new Dealer Partner model in 2024. The company has signed six U.S. dealers since announcing the switch from a direct-t0-consumer sales model in January and announced it has received “250 expressions of interest” from dealers in North America and Europe.

2023 Fisker Ocean

CEO Henrik Fisker announced during the call that the company is negotiating with an unnamed large automaker to generate a strategic partnership. Until a partnership can be put in place, the automaker confirmed it is pausing all plans for future products including the Pear SUV, the Alaska pickup truck, and the Ronin convertible. “We are not planning to start external expenditure on our next projects until we have a strategic OEM partnership in place,” Henrik Fisker said.

The California-based company launched the Ocean SUV in the second half of 2023, marking its first vehicle since the 2013 Karma. According to Fisker, the company delivered 3818 Ocean crossovers in the fourth quarter and 4929 in all of 2023. It appears the company has a substantial inventory of Oceans, as the company reportedly produced 10,193 vehicles in 2023. Despite the bleak outlook of the earnings call, the company said it expects to sell between 20,000 and 22,000 Oceans worldwide, relying on the planned expansion of the dealer partner footprint.