Mullen Automotive Stock Forecast: MULN keeps bouncing back as EV van production picks up
- Mullen completed production of 350 Class-1 EV vans.
- On Thursday, Mullen announced a new pilot program with the New York Power Authority.
- MULN stock gained 10.7% on Thursday.
- Mullen stock is in the green again on Friday.
After faltering at the beginning of the week, Mullen Automotive (MULN) stock is making a comeback in the second half. Dropping more than 26% through Wednesday, MULN stock took back 10.7% on Thursday and has added as much as 5% in Friday’s first hour of trading.
Mullen stock news: Production completed on 350 delivery vans
Mullen has been issuing press releases at a quickened pace of late. The announcement on July 5 that Mullen had obtained counsel to bring charges against alleged “naked short selling” led to MULN stock’s 200% surge in the first week of the month.
Then Mullen whetted the appetites of bulls the following day with the announcement of a $25 million buyback program that runs through the end of the year. Unfortunately, the policy does not oblige the company to use the funds for buybacks but only gives them the option to do so. Mullen had $235 million on its balance sheet from selling shares during the second quarter, but much of it is required to fund the production of commercial vehicles at its Tunica, Mississippi assembly plant.
“We are initiating this buyback program as an attractive opportunity to deploy capital and return value to our shareholders,” said David Michery, CEO and chairman of Mullen, at the time.
On Thursday, Mullen announced a new pilot program with the New York Power Authority (NYPA). The NYPA, a large state-owned power generation and transmission company, will test Mullen’s CAMPUS delivery van at its headquarters in upstate New York. Following the testing period, the company will have the ability to purchase these vehicles.
“The Mullen CAMPUS is a highly efficient electric van designed for low-speed, closed campus use [and] has all the same DNA as the Mullen ONE but was purpose-built to be an ideal delivery solution for micro-environments,” Mullen said in a statement.
This pilot program is similar to another one Mullen has with a university in North Carolina, which is testing more than dozen of these vehicles. Six other pilot programs for the CAMPUS vehicle were previously reported at the end of June when Mullen booked its first official revenue ($308,000) from the sale of 22 of these vehicles to the Randy Marion commercial dealership.
Now on Friday, July 14, Mullen announced that it has completed initial production of 350 Class-1 EV delivery vans at its Mishawaka, Indiana, facility and sent them for final assembly at its Mississippi plant.
Despite all the negativity surrounding the heavy dilution to shareholders in the past two years, the production team is beginning to show results. That is why the market is bidding up MULN on Friday. The company is finally moving away from its long-time reputation as an EV maker forever in its development stage.
EV stocks FAQs
Electric vehicles or EVs are automobiles that use rechargable batteries and electric motors to accelerate rather than internal combustion engines (ICEs). They have been around for more that 100 years, but battery technology research & development was meager for much of the 20th century. Lithium-ion battery technology became advanced enough to produce EVs at scale in the late 1990s and 2000s, and sales have been steadily increasing since then Tesla’s Roadster was unveiled in 2008. EVs are viewed as a means of reducing carbon emissions since battery electric vehicles (BEVs) themselves produce zero emissions. Other vehicles called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) utilize both battery electric power and ICEs as a backup.
EVs are growing from a small base, but they rose from 9% of global new auto sales in 2021 to 14% of the total in 2022. This was a 65% YoY growth rate, and the industry delivered 10.2 million EVs worldwide in 2022. Projections show this number climbing above 16 million in 2023. Across the world, market shares differ greatly among nations. Nearly 88% of Norwegian new car sales in 2022 were EVs. On the other hand, the United States, where much of the modern innovation in EVs was forged, had less than 8% of new vehicle sales go to EVs in 2022. The largest EV market in the world, China, saw 30% of the market go to EVs that year.
We know you’re thinking Elon Musk, but he’s probably more like the father of the mass-market, contemporary EV. All the way back in 1827, a Hungarian priest named Anyos Jedlik invented the electric motor and used it the following year to power a vehicle of sorts. French scientist Gaston Planté invented the lead-acid battery in 1859, and German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first true electric car for the public in 1888. EVs made up about 38% of all vehicles sold in the US around 1900. They began losing market share rapidly after 1910 when gasoline-powered vehicles grew much more affordable. They largely died off until new research programs in the 1990s led to gradual private sector investment in the 2000s.
China’s BYD is by far the largest manufacturer of EVs in the world. In 2022 it sold 1.8 million EVs and in the second half of the year made up 20% of the global market. The asterisk given to BYD is that the vast majority of these vehicles are hybrids. Tesla’s 12% market share is often treated as more significant than BYD, because it only sells BEVs and is the most famous EV brand in the world. Volkswagen, BMW and Wuling then round out the top five. As a new sector with heavy investment though, many startups have flooded the market. These include China’s Nio, Li Auto and Xpeng; a Swedish-Chinese manufacturer called Polestar; and Lucid and Rivian from the US.
Mullen stock forecast: Which way penny stock man?
Mullen remains highly affected by headlines, but the company’s buyback policy could have immense upside power. Mullen’s entire market cap is just circa $100 million, so if the entire $25 million worth of firepower is used, it could produce serious uplift to the MULN stock price.
Right now, Mullen stock is just escaping the oversold realm on the Relative Strength Index (RSI). Support remains at $0.1000, while the recent swing high creates a price target for bulls at $0.3212. With Mullen, anything could happen.
MULN daily chart