Fisker lowers production forecast again

It is not only a significant drop compared to the previous forecast of 20,000 to 23,000 vehicles in August. Until May, Fisker assumed it would produce 42,400 Oceans in 2023 before lowering its forecast to 32,000 to 36,000 cars. In other words, if production reaches the lower threshold of 13,000 Ocean, this will only be around 30 per cent of the initially planned quantity.

In the third quarter of 2023, Fisker produced 4,725 units of its Ocean, its only model to date, at Magna in Austria. In Q2, it had manufactured 1,022 units. 1,097 Fisker Ocean were delivered from July to September, compared to just eleven units in Q2/2023. In October, Fisker delivered 1,200 vehicles – more than in the third quarter.

In mid-September, Fisker announced that production of the Ocean would be ramped up significantly in the fourth quarter – from 180 to 300 units per day. A further increase is also necessary to reach the 13,000 units. In the announcement, Fisker stated that 3,123 vehicles had been built. If the production from the second and third quarters are added together, this still results in only 5,747 Ocean. However, with the announced increase to 300 vehicles per day, the new target could still be achieved – provided there are no further delays.

There is one big but. The bottleneck no longer seems to be production (when the forecast was lowered in August, it was said that a supplier could not ramp up production sufficiently) but rather the company’s delivery and service infrastructure. “We have not been able to follow through with deliveries fast enough,” said Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker in an interview with media and analysts. “People have paid and are waiting for their cars, and some of them are really getting annoyed.”

The company is currently hiring 20 to 30 employees per week and gaining more logistics partners to speed up deliveries. However, Fisker also does not want to sit on too much (and expensive) stock and could, therefore, cut back production if deliveries are still not fast enough.

Fisker’s turnover in the third quarter of 2023 amounted to 71.8 million US dollars, with a net loss of 91 million dollars. The quarterly result and the lowered production forecast caused Fisker’s share price to fall by 14 per cent after the close of trading on Monday.

Fisker initially planned to publish its Q3 figures on 8 November, but postponed by a few days at short notice. That is because of the departure of the Chief Accounting Officer, who is now accused of deficiencies in accounting and internal control. According to Fisker, the problems were related to the complex accounting in several countries, which concerned convertible bonds, derivatives, as well as raw material and finished goods inventories in the contract manufacturing of its vehicles. It is hiring experts to fix the problems.

Update 04 December 2023

The electric car manufacturer Fisker is lowering its production forecast for 2023 once again. After last lowering its forecast to between 13,000 and 17,000 vehicles produced in 2023 as a whole, Fisker now only expects to produce just over 10,000 units. The reason given for this is the decision to produce fewer vehicles than previously planned in December in order to “prioritize liquidity and free up over 300 million US dollars in working capital, which creates additional business flexibility”.

reuters.com, fiskerinc.com, reuters.com, fiskerinc.com (both update)