Shares of Lucid Group climbed nearly 10% in their first day of trading on Monday after the electric-vehicle company completed a blank-check merger ahead of plans to launch production later this year.
Lucid stock was trading at $26.55 around midday. Shares of Churchill Capital Corp. IV , the special-purpose acquisition company with which Lucid merged, ended trading at $24.25 on Friday.
The companies announced the SPAC deal in February amid a wave of investor enthusiasm for blank-check mergers, which allow businesses to go public through combinations with shell companies while avoiding a traditional initial public offering. The transaction injected $4.4 billion into Lucid on terms that valued the company at $24 billion.
As the SPAC deal took shape earlier this year, investors bid up Churchill’s shares—which are now trading as Lucid shares on the Nasdaq exchange—even though Lucid hasn’t yet delivered any cars. Though it has fallen from a peak of nearly $60 a share in February, the stock has still more than doubled year to date.
Lucid is one of about two dozen electric-vehicle companies that have raised money from SPACs in the past year, many of which have wooed investors with eye-popping growth projections despite limited current revenue.
