Mullen Automotive Stock Forecast: MULN plummets as indices rise on Friday
- Mullen held its shareholder meeting on August 3.
- It’s unclear whether the company received enough votes for another reverse stock split.
- July US Nonfarm Payrolls surprised to the downside.
- S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 both gain in early Friday trade
Mullen Automotive (MULN) stock slumped nearly 10% on Friday despite the broad market advancing at a healthy clip. The poor showing comes a day after MULN stock added 12%, closing at $0.1365.
The US Nonfarm Payrolls data came in below expectations. This was largely seen as positive by the equity market as it makes a September interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve (Fed) somewhat less likely.
Mullen stock news: Nonfarm Payrolls reduce chance of September rate hike
US Nonfarm Payrolls for July came in at 187K, below the 200K expected by analysts. Additionally, the previous month’s 209K new hirings was revised down to 185K.
Usually, a lower reading would be worrying to the stock market, but this time the market is taking it as a reason to rejoice. While Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, remained open to another rate hike later this year at the central bank’s July policy meeting, he hinted that further disinflationary data would make another hike less necessary.
This month’s NFP unveiling certainly did that. The tight labor market had concerned Fed officials in that it could imply the making of a wage-price spiral. The US Unemployment Rate for July did tick lower from 3.6% to 3.5%, and wage gains also did not help the picture so much. This might be why the market is somewhat tentative about the results.
In point of fact, the Average Hourly Earnings reported as part of the NFP remained flat with June at 0.4% MoM and 4.4% YoY. Analysts had expected these figures to fall slightly in July’s reading.
Mullen stock news: Shareholder meeting rumors
Mullen has not yet reported or filed any documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the details of its August 3 shareholder meeting. Rumors have been circulating online, however, that Proposal 3 passed. That was the one that allows Mullen to effect a reverse stock split at any ratio between 1-for-2 and 1-for-100. The company needs to place its share price above $1 for 10 consecutive trading sessions by September 5 in order to satisfy the NASDAQ Exchange’s bylaws.
User @FinJourney on X (aka Twitter) suggests that the reverse split proposal has passed a shareholder vote
There was a problem with the audio recording of the meeting though, and some other users are uncertain as to what the outcome was.
Another X user joked that the poor audio was done on purpose by CEO David Michery
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
Mullen stock jumped to $0.1730 during the shareholder meeting but gave back most of that rally by the end of the Thursday trade. The stock was left with a long top wick, which is usually viewed as bearish.
Then again, penny stocks just trade differently. At least MULN stock momentarily broke above the 21-day Simple Moving Average (SMA). It needs to close above that SMA in order to return to an uptrend.
Thus far on Friday, there doesn’t appear to be a similar level of volume as Thursday. Support remains at $0.10.
MULN daily chart