Electric vehicle maker Nikola (NASDAQ:NKLA) didn’t have the best round of earnings emerge earlier today. It’s got better hopes for the future and some plans to see better achievement then. However, two birds in the bush didn’t enthuse investors, and Nikola shares were down substantially in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
Nikola’s earnings turned out to be better than expected, but not by that much. Earnings per share came in at a loss of $0.37, which was better than projected. Analyst consensus looked for a loss of $0.43 per share. However, it was still a loss. Worse, revenue was in open decline. Nikola actually did make some sales this quarter, bringing in $6.6 million. It was a shame that analysts were looking for $33.49 million to emerge. Perhaps worst of all was the revelation that Nikola delivered just 20 trucks to dealers last quarter.
However, there’s still hope at Nikola, as it has big plans for the future. It plans to be among the first to “…market and commercialize fuel cell electric vehicles.” It also plans to start delivering these devices before the end of this year. It’s received orders from Plug Power (NASDAQ:PLUG), among others, for its Tre fuel cell electric vehicle units. And perhaps best of all, it’s in the process of building and testing its gamma line of trucks.
While the future might be better than the past, hedge funds don’t believe there’s much hope for Nikola at all. In fact, right now, hedge fund confidence is considered Very Negative, as they reduced their holdings by 3.4 million shares last quarter. Since it seems that 3.4 million shares represented most of the hedge funds’ holdings, that could mean bad news for Nikola altogether.
