Competition in the electric vehicle business is heating up. That isn’t making life easy for EV start-ups looking to compete with
Tesla,
and traditional auto makers looking to defend their market share.
Thursday, Wolfe Research analyst Shreyas Patil downgraded shares of EV start-up
Fisker
(ticker: FSR) to Sell from Hold, according to stock market ratings aggregators. Wolfe didn’t immediately respond to a request for the report. His price target for
Fisker
stock is $6. Shares closed Wednesday at $6.18 a piece.
Patil calls Fisker shares speculative, pointing out that its coming Ocean SUV enters a relatively saturated part of the EV market. The vehicle has to compete, to some extent, with the likes of a
Tesla
(TSLA) Model Y,
Ford Motor
(F) Mach E,
Rivian Automotive
(RIVN) R1S and the coming Chevy Blazer.
What’s more, Tesla’s recent price cuts are making life harder for start-ups. A Model Y starts at about $47,000 today, down from roughly $60,000 at the start of 2023.
Fisker stock is down about 2.8% in premarket trading Thursday, while
S&P 500
and
Nasdaq Composite
futures are both up about 0.1%.
To be sure, Fisker has its strategy for managing costs to compete with larger players. The company doesn’t own manufacturing capacity, which can be expensive to build. It uses
Magna International
(MGA) to build the Ocean. Magna is an auto parts giant with a decades-old contract manufacturing business.
With the downgrade, 33% of analysts covering the company rate shares Sell. The average Sell-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is less than 10%. One-third, or 33%, rate share Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 53%.
The average analyst price target for Fisker shares is almost $10.
Competition, along with rising interest rates and a slowing economy, has sapped some investor enthusiasm for shares. Coming into Thursday trading, Fisker stock is down about 35% over the past 12 months.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
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