🚀 US EV Industry's Q2

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Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. The domestic electric vehicle market recorded sharply divergent outcomes in the second quarter, highlighted by a significantly higher-than-expected number of deliveries and a raised full-year outlook from Rivian, contrasted with an earnings miss and an immediate executive shake-up at Lucid. Rivian outpaced Wall Street projections by producing 12,613 vehicles and delivering 12,194 units during the second quarter, handily beating the FactSet consensus of 11,000 units, driven by sustained traction for its commercial delivery vans, its flagship R1 platform, and the initial rollout of its midsize R2 SUV from its Normal, Illinois, production facility. Building on this momentum, Rivian raised its full-year 2026 delivery guidance to 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles, up from its previous target of 62,000 to 67,000 units, sending its stock up nearly 5% in premarket trading. Conversely, luxury competitor Lucid Group faltered, reporting 4,774 vehicles produced and only 3,953 delivered for the quarter, missing FactSet’s consensus estimate of 5,000 units and prompting newly appointed CEO Silvio Napoli to implement a sweeping corporate reorganization to halve his direct reports. As part of this corporate streamlining to prioritize quality and innovation, Lucid confirmed that Chief Financial Officer Taoufiq Boussaid will exit the company following a transition period, with former TI Automotive finance executive Alexander De Bock stepping in as the incoming CFO.

2. U.S. job creation cooled sharply heading into the summer as nonfarm payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 57,000 in June, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The headline figure marked a steep deceleration from a downwardly revised 129,000 jobs in May, missing the Dow Jones consensus forecast of 115,000, and accompanied by net downward revisions of 74,000 positions for the previous two months. Despite sluggish hiring, the national unemployment rate fell to 4.2%, driven primarily by a 0.3 percentage-point slump in the labour force participation rate to a five-year low of 61.5%, as household employment plummeted by 507,000. On the compensation front, average hourly earnings rose 0.3% for the month and 3.5% annually, matching Wall Street expectations. Sector gains were led by professional and business services with 36,000 positions, followed by social assistance at 25,000 and healthcare at 22,000, while government roles edged up by 8,000. Conversely, the leisure and hospitality sector suffered a severe contraction, shedding 61,000 jobs due to unusually slow seasonal hiring that completely defied Goldman Sachs' projections of a 40,000-job World Cup bump. This weaker labour market reading complicates matters for newly appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, who had just termed the employment picture "steady" on Wednesday; though markets have been pricing in a quarter-percentage-point interest rate hike for September to combat persistent tariff- and war-driven inflation, Warsh's strict avoidance of forward guidance leaves the central bank's next policy path highly uncertain.

3. Retail beef and steak prices across the United States remain near historic highs due to a severe supply crunch caused by years of widespread drought, elevated feed costs, and herd liquidations that have shrunk the domestic cattle population to its smallest size in decades. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of ground beef reached $6.75 USD per pound in May—a 13% increase from a year ago—while beef steak prices surged 16% year-over-year to an average of $12.80 USD per pound. Despite this severe sticker shock, consumer demand has proven remarkably resilient ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, with nationwide beef sales jumping by roughly $352 million USD compared to last year, according to consumer research firm NielsenIQ. Shoppers are increasingly treating steak as an "affordable luxury" for special occasions, maintaining their dining traditions by hunting for value cuts or shifting explicitly toward high-quality, verified labels. This demand has buoyed major food brands, with retail giant Kroger reporting elevated movement in premium and organic options, Omaha Steaks seeing a 25% year-over-year spike in its value-focused top sirloin filet sales ahead of Father's Day, and casual dining chains like Darden Restaurants' LongHorn Steakhouse benefiting as grocery store inflation narrows the relative value gap between cooking at home and eating out.

   Headlines

   1. Tesla beat expectations, delivering 480,126 vehicles in Q2.

   2. Meta is moving into cloud computing as it shifts away from the metaverse.