The Workhorse Group Incorporated is a EV company which primarily produces delivery vans and got lately popular with a rising share price because it was viewed as one of the possible winners of an 8 billion USPS contract to replace old delivery vans.

This contract busted, however I started writing this article before the deal busted - so don’t be surprised by the high numbers.

I owned this stock for several years and wanna display my view of the company in this blog post.

The USPS Deal#

WKHS has a bad history with the USPS. E.g. a USPS driver was hurt during a prototype test. This isn’t the first USPS Deal on which WKHS had bid, more later on…

Competition for WKHS is Oshkosh (with Ford) and Karsan. Oshkosh had also offered a EV solution based on the Ford E-Transit.

I thought Oshkosh has a very good chance because they are one of the Top 100 Contractors of the U.S. federal government. They have lots of experience while Workhorse never had such big contracts and would need help to produce lots of vehicles in a short time (at WKHS they assembled the vehicles via hand in the past, not automated in a factory)

Oshkosh won the Deal, however the Valuation of this two stocks before that wasn’t on par. WKHS was way higher valuated.

The Valuation#

Would the Workhorse Group have won an 8 billion contract they probably won’t be able to produce all new vehicles in one year. But even if they would do that: Oshkosh had more than 8 billion revenue in 2019 and had a market cap of 6,78 billion USD.

Workhorse had at 36,19 USD per stock a market cap of 4,36 billion. So the market cap already was in the area of a company with 8 billion revenue. I don’t see any reason why a higher valuation should be justified.

So the valuation already had a winning of the contract and a really big EV bonus priced in. It may be fair compared to other EV companies like Tesla, but it definitely isn’t fair if you take good old school value figures.

The Cycle#

The Workhorse Stock is a Story Stock. This is not the first bid for a USPS Deal from Workhorse and you can see when they did bid on a big contract in the stock price history. Most of the times the big deals bust.

Current CEO Duane Hughes has a media background - perfect for marketing a story and if you read a few of the many short reports you see that this is the way with which the management had made money: Market the Story of the big deal and sell shares.

Future#

Dubious YouTube Videos and bad finances should have been a big red flag for every common investor but the EV-Hyped Robinhood Community and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest have pushed this stock without looking too much on the fundamentals and competition.

So at the time of the writing the stock crashed after the announcement of the USPS Oshkosh Deal more than 47 percent to 16 USD.

I can’t say for sure if the stock will go up some time in the future again, BUT I am pretty sure if the stock goes up, it will be because some POSSIBLE Deal will get announced again.

Make one thing clear: This wasn’t a traditional investment, this was a bet on a single Deal which made the most part of the valuation. That’s the reason I sold my shares - I don’t wanna make bets, I want to own profitable companies which share part of the profit with me.

If you are in the stock market because of Bets, you probably should reconsider your Strategy. Because busted Stories like this can destroy your portfolio.

Disclaimer#

This is not investment advice or a buy/sell recommendation. This is my personal opinion and is for information and entertainment purposes only.

Everyone acts independently with their financial decision and bears responsibility for it themselves. Trading in securities is always subject to risks and can lead to total loss or debt (e.g. in the case of warrants). Liability is excluded.