Shares of Luminar Technologies (LAZR) closed up 6.23% Monday, February 27, added a another 0.91% during today’s regular session, and then fell 2.01% in after hours trading on the company’s announcement of substantial progress toward cash flow positive by the fourth quarter of 2023.
Luminar Technologies (LAZR) has pretty much all the characteristics the Bear Market hates most right now. The company went public via a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), once the hottest “invention” on the stock market and currently one of the most scorned. The company has tiny revenue–just $37.11 million for the trailing 12 months. And big losses: the operating loss for the trailing 12 months is $327.88 million. (The company had $605 million in cash on hand on June 30, 2022.) No wonder the stock is down 56.4% for 2022 as of the close on September 23. The stock traded at $7.49 a share as of 3 p.m. New York time on September 26. But what puts Luminar on my list of Penny Stocks to Buy the Future is that this company is likely to be the largest pure-play supplier of LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging–think of it as radar that uses lasers and light instead of radio waves) for self-driving cars and for enhanced safety and driver assist technologies on more conventional cars.
