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A laboratory at electric-battery maker Quantumscape.
Courtesy Quantumscape
QuantumScape
stock saw a wild gain on Wednesday, ahead of reporting a narrower-than-expected fourth-quarter loss after the market close. Shares are plunging Thursday morning.
What’s more, the plunge is happening even though earnings don’t matter for the electric-vehicle battery startup.
QuantumScape
(ticker: QS) doesn’t have sales yet. Investors, if they can stomach wild trading, should just focus on the company’s goals for 2023.
QuantumScape reported a fourth-quarter loss of 25 cents a share, while Wall Street was looking for a 29 cent loss.
Shares are down about 10% in Thursday morning trading at $10.60, while the
S&P 500
and
Nasdaq Composite
are down 0.9% and 1.2%, respectively. Down after better numbers might be a surprise, but shares gained 32% on Wednesday during regular trading hours.
Why the stock was up 32% on Wednesday is anyone’s guess. There could have been some short covering by bearish investors who bet on price declines headed into the earnings report. Many EV-related stocks did well on Wednesday after the White House announced more money for EV-charging infrastructure.
Tesla
(TSLA) gained 2.4% on Wednesday. Shares of charging companies
EVgo
(EVGO) and
ChargePoint Holdings
(CHPT) rose 8.6% and 10%, respectively.
QuantumScape is vying to be part of the EV supply chain. The company is working on so-called solid-state, lithium anode EV batteries. Solid state in this case refers to a solid electrolyte, a battery component that facilitates the movement of electric charges. Today’s electrolytes are liquid.
Solid-state batteries hold the promise of lower cost, better safety, faster charging, and longer EV range. The technology, however, is new and not ready for use in the harsh automotive environment.
Wall Street expects QuantumScape to generate significant sales, about $300 million, in 2026. That will be when car companies are just starting to test out solid-state batteries in their EV platforms.
Management listed goals for 2023 in its earnings report, including: increasing cathode-capacity loading, improving cell-pack efficiency, deploying faster component-manufacturing technology, among other things.
QuantumScape sees capital spending at about $125 million in 2023, and operating expenses at around $250 million. The $375 million total is far less than the more than $1 billion in cash and securities the company finished 2022 with.
Coming into Thursday trading, QuantumScape stock is up almost 110% year to date. Shares are still down more than 30% over the past 12 months, however, and down 91% from a record high of $132.73, set in December 2020.
It’s a wild time for QuantumScape shareholders, and traders, over the past couple of years.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
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