The maker of the US $169,000 Air sedan said in a regulatory filing that it received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on December 3. Lucid said the probe appears to be related to the merger of the carmaker and Churchill Capital Corp. IV, the special purpose acquisition company that took Lucid public in July. We apologize, but this video hasn't loaded.
Tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Lucid shares plunged by 19 per cent to US $38.06 shortly after the start of regular trading Monday. The stock had doubled since it first appeared on July 26, through last week s close. The investigation is a blow to one of the more promising upstarts trying to take on Tesla Inc. in the EV market. The SEC opened investigations into Nikola Corp., Lordstown Motors Corp. and Canoo Inc. before Lucid, all of which went public last year after mergers with SPACs.
A combination of a SPAC and a traditional public offering allows companies to make forward projections to investors before their listings, unlike in a traditional public offering. Since the stock market debuts, the founders of Canoo, Lordstown Motors and Nikola have left their respective companies. Lucid has had a smooth run since it went public. In September, the Air sedan supplanted Tesla's highest-range vehicle, the Model S, with a 520 mile rating. The merger of Churchill Capital SPAC with Lucid was the largest run by Michael Klein, a former Citigroup Inc. investment banker. Klein was a prominent financial adviser to Saudi Arabia, which first invested in Lucid in 2018. The SEC has been subject to more scrutiny of SPACs under Chairman Gary Gensler, filing 434 enforcement actions in its latest fiscal period, up 7 per cent from the previous year. The agency singled out cryptocurrencies and SPACs as emerging threats it is concerned with.