The leaders of Mullen Automotive, the parent of the Mullen and Bollinger brands of commercial electric vehicles, are preparing to lay off an unspecific number of employees and further trim the company’s real estate footprint as they seek to make the company’s sparse cash last longer.
Southern California-based Mullen said late last week that both the layoffs and lease eliminations will happen this month but offered no details as to targets or expected cost savings from each initiative.
“We [are] taking every opportunity to adapt our verticals based on market needs, allowing us to remain competitive in an ever-changing economy,” David Michery, chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “Our continued focus is on selling vehicles and advancing our battery technologies.”
At the end of September, Mullen employed 388 people full-time, with 243 at its Mullen operations and 145 at Bollinger. But Michery and his team soon after that date announced they were cutting about 70 jobs as they ended Mullen’s three-model passenger vehicle development work to focus only on commercial vehicles.
Mullen incurred lease costs of $1.2 million in the quarter ended December 31, which was essentially unchanged from the same period a year earlier. (At year’s end, it had $2.3 million in cash and equivalents, down from $10.3 million three months prior.) The company—which owns manufacturing plants in Tunica, Mississippi, and Mishawaka, Indiana, that span a combined 770,000 sq. ft.—has been streamlining its other real estate holdings as part of work to integrate Mullen and Bollinger, which it acquired in September 2022.
Word of Mullen’s latest round of cuts comes six weeks after Michery reported a net loss of $119 million on sales of $2.9 million during the company’s first fiscal quarter. That came after losses totaled $506 million in the 2024 fiscal year, following which Michery forecast that the pivot to only making commercial vehicles would bring in $75 million in revenue by spring.
But that top-line surge hasn’t materialized: In their cost-cut update, Michery and Mullen said the quarter’s revenues through March 21 were $3.2 million.
Shares of Mullen (Ticker: MULN) closed trading March 31 at 10.5 cents, down nearly 9% from the previous Friday’s close. They have lost nearly all of their value over the past six months, and the company’s market capitalization is now a mere $386,000.
