Nikola Corporation: The Next Step in Being Public

Nikola Corporation, which filed its Analyst Day presentation on Friday, April 3rd, goes into greater detail of the Business model presented in early March when Nikola Motor announced the business combination with VectoIQ.

For those that want to go down the road of comparing the Nikola FCEV bundled lease model versus the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a commercial vehicle, I recommend using the data from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI).

The cost of a new diesel vehicle is lower than the price tag of the Nikola models. Still, the lease option allows Nikola to gain total cost parity through its fueling package, as well as a much lower-cost service and maintenance offering.

I believe today’s meeting with sell-side analysts could focus on these different contributors to the overall cost of ownership, especially those who specialize in the Transportation sector. We will not know the type of analyst that will pick up coverage of Nikola probably until the deal closes. Nikola does have attributes to cross a few coverage universes. While not all firms have the resources to cover the Transportation sub-sector, the Nikola narrative fits the broad umbrella of Industrials, and on a more nichey side does meet the criteria of an analyst that covers renewable energy companies.

Ultimately the greatest attribute Nikola has going for it coverage-wise is its need for capital going forward. And that goes a long way towards allocating equity research coverage these days.

There should be a fair amount of catalysts for this name over the next few months as they have only given details on 6% of their reservation book of 14,000 FCEVs, and they expect to unveil the first BEV from the German facility in late September.