Mullen Automotive Stock Forecast: MULN gains on Thursday after horrible January performance
- MULN stock rose more than 3.5% on Thursday.
- CEO Michery says Mullen is differentiates itself by launching vehicles that are profitable on day one.
- Mullen Automotive stock has advanced nearly 8% this week but remains down 49% YTD.
- The EV company received its first order from the Dominican Republic this week.
Mullen Automotive (MULN) stock is finally gaining this week after many weeks of a heavy sell-off. After finishing its first month of 2024, MULN stock closed on Thursday down 49% for the year. This week the electric vehicle (EV) stock has risen 7.7% however. Could this finally be the turning point that shareholders have been waiting for?
The S&P 500 has gained a little over 0.3% through Thursday this week, so by comparison Mullen stock is exceeding expectations for once. It would appear that the major sell-off seen in January is at the least taking a rest. Mullen has not been diluting the share count since last Summer, but certain investors continue to hold warrants that can be traded for common shares in the future. This latter consideration has put downward pressure on MULN stock since the reverse stock split in December.
The S&P 500 saw its futures rise 0.6% late Thursday after earnings results from Meta Platforms (META), owner of Facebook and Instagram, rose 15%, while the same from Amazon (AMZN) pushed that mega cap up 7%.
Mullen Automotive stock news: Michery gazes toward Caribbean
Mullen CEO David Michery was out with another press release on Thursday touting his company’s strategy. The besieged founder and CEO, who has received criticism for near constant shareholder dilution over the past few years, extolled Mullen’s performance since selling its first wave of vehicles in late 2023.
“While many of the OEMs and new EV companies have launched their EVs with significant losses, Mullen is out-of-the-gate with a positive gross profit margin per vehicle,” Michery gloated. “EV growth has slowed in the retail segment [globally] but continues to increase across the commercial and fleet segments, where we now have a strong vehicle lineup in the market.”
Michery announced that Mullen has invoiced its distributors for $17.3 million so far since inking its first sales agreement last September. This is a small figure by automotive OEM standards, but Mullen does appear to be growing its list of customers.
On Tuesday, Mullen announced it had sent 20 of its CAMPUS vehicles to Grupo Caval in the Dominican Republic. Grupo Caval operates a series of Electric Motors dealerships and has automotive industry relationships throughout the Caribbean. Mullen believes this partnership will allow it to expand throughout the region in the future.
Similar to the Mullen ONE last-mile delivery van, the Mullen CAMPUS model is a delivery van for “ low-speed, closed-campus use”. The model has been received with success by several college campuses and a utility corporation in the US.
EV stocks FAQs
What are electric vehicles?
Electric vehicles or EVs are automobiles that use rechargable batteries and electric motors to accelerate rather than internal combustion engines (ICEs). They have been around for more that 100 years, but battery technology research & development was meager for much of the 20th century. Lithium-ion battery technology became advanced enough to produce EVs at scale in the late 1990s and 2000s, and sales have been steadily increasing since then Tesla’s Roadster was unveiled in 2008. EVs are viewed as a means of reducing carbon emissions since battery electric vehicles (BEVs) themselves produce zero emissions. Other vehicles called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) utilize both battery electric power and ICEs as a backup.
What is the market share held by EVs?
EVs are growing from a small base, but they rose from 9% of global new auto sales in 2021 to 14% of the total in 2022. This was a 65% YoY growth rate, and the industry delivered 10.2 million EVs worldwide in 2022. Projections show this number climbing above 16 million in 2023. Across the world, market shares differ greatly among nations. Nearly 88% of Norwegian new car sales in 2022 were EVs. On the other hand, the United States, where much of the modern innovation in EVs was forged, had less than 8% of new vehicle sales go to EVs in 2022. The largest EV market in the world, China, saw 30% of the market go to EVs that year.
Who is the father of the EV?
We know you’re thinking Elon Musk, but he’s probably more like the father of the mass-market, contemporary EV. All the way back in 1827, a Hungarian priest named Anyos Jedlik invented the electric motor and used it the following year to power a vehicle of sorts. French scientist Gaston Planté invented the lead-acid battery in 1859, and German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first true electric car for the public in 1888. EVs made up about 38% of all vehicles sold in the US around 1900. They began losing market share rapidly after 1910 when gasoline-powered vehicles grew much more affordable. They largely died off until new research programs in the 1990s led to gradual private sector investment in the 2000s.
Who are the biggest makers of electric vehicles?
China’s BYD is by far the largest manufacturer of EVs in the world. In 2022 it sold 1.8 million EVs and in the second half of the year made up 20% of the global market. The asterisk given to BYD is that the vast majority of these vehicles are hybrids. Tesla’s 12% market share is often treated as more significant than BYD, because it only sells BEVs and is the most famous EV brand in the world. Volkswagen, BMW and Wuling then round out the top five. As a new sector with heavy investment though, many startups have flooded the market. These include China’s Nio, Li Auto and Xpeng; a Swedish-Chinese manufacturer called Polestar; and Lucid and Rivian from the US.
Mullen stock forecast
Mullen stock has been faltering since its post-reverse-split rally ended on January 10. That downtrend bottomed on January 24 at $6.36. MULN stock closed up 3.56% on Thursday at $7.27 and hasn’t reached a new lower low in six sessions. For such a moribund stock, this is actually saying something.
Notably, Mullen stock has also resisted settling below the December 21 low of $6.95. This would seem to show that there is at least some appetite to buy shares at this current price level. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator also has just barely crossed over in a bullish fashion on Thursday, which normally predates a coming rally. Long-time traders will wait for MULN stock to break above the 20-day Simple Moving Average (SMA), currently at $9.68, before going long.
MULN daily stock chart
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Author
Clay Webster
FXStreet
Clay Webster grew up in the US outside Buffalo, New York and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He began investing after college following the 2008 financial crisis.
