Canoo Made $886,000 In 2023, Spent $1.7 Million On CEO’s Private Jet

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Canoo just posted another quarterly loss and the plan for 2024 doesn’t look like it’ll end that streak. It made $886,000 during 2023, but spent twice that on private jet flights for its CEO. A deeper look at its 2023 fourth-quarter results and outlook for 2024 indicates that an uphill battle is ahead.

The end of 2023 marked some positive developments for the startup. The revenue it managed to rake in was up from $0 in 2022. In addition, it slashed losses from $487 million in 2022 to just $302 million in 2023. It also managed to deliver 22 vehicles in total to organizations like Walmart, Kingbee, and NASA.

Read: Canoo American Bulldog Is A Tough Military-Themed Electric Pickup

It predicts that it’ll make somewhere between $50 and $100 million this year in revenue. That’s at least $52 million short of what analysts expected, according to AutoNews. At the same time, Canoo cited limited capital and the ability to continue as a going concern in its most recent financial results.

In the regulatory filing, The Verge and Tech Crunch discovered that it actually spent $1.7 million (double its total revenue) on private jet flights for CEO Tony Aquila. What makes this tidbit even more interesting is that the struggling EV startup paid that money to Aquila Family Ventures, which, as you guessed, is owned by the CEO for the use of the aircraft. The EV company had previously paid Aquila Family Ventures $1.3 million in 2021 and $1.8 million in 2022 for jet hires.

Additionally, Canoo allocated $1.7 million in 2023, $1.1 million in 2022, and $500,000 in 2021 to Aquila Family Ventures for shared services support at its corporate office facility in Justin, Texas.

Nevertheless, those figures could prove a drop in the bucket if Canoo achieves its revenue forecast of $50 to $100 million in 2024, but it won’t be easy. The EV industry is in the midst of a slowing in both demand and production. Tesla just had its worst quarter in terms of growth since early 2020. BYD also saw a 43 percent reduction in deliveries compared to Q4 2023.

If those giant EV companies are facing tough times, then the hill that Canoo has to climb is even bigger. Officials there say that they’ll continue to source capital as needed though. “We will continue to make progress towards accessing additional forms of debt and other non-dilutive forms of capital as we move into 2024,” CFO Greg Ethridge said according to Reuters. “Let’s be very clear. We’ll only raise the capital that we need.”

For the time being, the markets aren’t loving the 2024 Canoo forecast. The stock price is down 29 percent today as of this writing. This year it’s fallen over 70 percent.