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Ferrari’s EV Reveal: A Top for the Stock? Sizing Up Thursday’s Plunge.

Oct 09, 2025 15:29:00 -0400 by George Glover | #EVs #Feature

The chassis of the new Ferrari Elettrica. The rest of the car will be unveiled in the spring of 2026. (Courtesy Ferrari)

The luxe car maker unveiled its first electric vehicle amid great fanfare. Why the stock fell 16%.

Key Points

MARANELLO, Italy— Ferrari gave investors a glimpse of its first electric model on Wednesday, at a presentation here that felt more like something out of the Tron sci-fi franchise than a luxury launch event.

Laser beams and pounding industrial music accompanied Ferrari’s reveal of the Elettrica’s chassis, motor, and battery pack, as well as a built-in system that amplifies the sounds of the electric engine in a bid to replicate the feeling that drivers get when they hear the visceral roar of a traditional supercar.

For investors, however, there was only the sound of a plunging stock.

The problem was that Ferrari also unveiled its financial projections for the rest of this decade, and they were lower than expected. The Milan-listed shares fell 15.8% on Thursday, to 354 euros ($409), the largest one-day decline since the company went public in October 2015. That could mark the end of a run-up that saw the shares more than double in the three years through Wednesday. They’re now down about 15% for the year.

The long-awaited Elettrica is emerging as a symbol of the road ahead—both the obstacles and the unknowns.

The cars are being manufactured in-house at a brand new “e-building” in Maranello, the northern Italian city that Ferrari calls home. Anyone who wants to see more will have to wait until spring 2026, when the company plans to lift the hood on what the finished model will look like and cost.

There’s a lot riding on whether Ferrari enthusiasts, who’ve helped transform the car maker into Europe’s most valuable auto company, buy in. The company, with a market value of $76.5 billion, scaled back its previous guidance about electrification at a Capital Markets Day on Thursday but still expects 20% of its lineup to be electric by 2030.

The case for electrification relies on there being an undertapped market of would-be buyers—wealthy people who care about the planet too much to want to drive a supercar powered by a traditional internal combustion engine.

“Luxury EVs are still a young and immature category,” says Brian Lum, an investment manager at Baillie Gifford. “It’s important to build that next generation of Ferraristi, and electrification should help them to do that.” Baillie Gifford holds about 4.3 million Ferrari shares, a position that was valued at about $2.1 billion as of Wednesday’s close.

The raw stats also look impressive. At 1,000 horsepower, the Elettrica offers as much power output as any other top-end Ferrari, and a top speed of more than 192 miles an hour is in line with most of the company’s existing models. After a single charging session, the car will be able to drive at least 329 miles, which ought to combat some customers’ range anxiety.

But Ferrari’s entire business model hinges on cachet. The Prancing Horse’s customers are willing to fork out millions of dollars to make repeat purchases because of the perception that its supercars are best-in-class. If the EV rollout doesn’t go to plan, it could undermine that brand.

It remains to be seen whether the amplified engine noises win over fans that already own dozens of traditional, gas-guzzling Ferraris. And like other EVs, the Elettrica won’t have gears—instead, paddles on the steering wheel will enable drivers to adjust power delivery and torque, and switch among three driving modes.

“I’m strongly against fake engine sounds….In every case, I’ve found it very tacky,” Luc Poirier, a Canadian real estate investor who currently owns 34 Ferraris and plans to add more to his collection, tells Barron’s ahead of the EV reveal. “To me, it takes away from the purity of the driving experience and feels artificial, almost like a gimmick.”

Even after Thursday’s stock tumble, investors are paying up for Ferrari. The shares trade at 38 times estimated earnings for the next 12 months, high for a company whose projected earnings growth has fallen to just 5.5% a year through 2030. It’s higher than BMW’s multiple of 7.3, Porsche’s 31.8, and luxe standard-bearer LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s 24.

Investors could well lose some ardor for Ferrari if it can’t get the electric rollout right.

Earlier this year, the company’s board warned that the Elettrica may not sell at Ferrari’s typical lofty margins, so it could be partly to blame for the soft guidance.

There are costs attached to the electric pivot, too: Ferrari has dipped into its pockets to construct the Maranello e-building, and expects cumulative expenditures of €4.7 billion from 2026 to 2030 as it ups its innovation efforts. Unless the company can wow investors with its EV pricing, the Elettrica could weigh on the stock for some time.

This isn’t just a Ferrari problem. Other high-end auto makers also have struggled to reposition their businesses in the EV era.

Porsche gave its fourth profit warning of the year on Sept. 19, saying that volatile demand would force it to delay the launch of a long-awaited all-electric vehicle. It said it expects to take a €1.8 billion hit from rescheduling a platform for EVs in the 2030s, and cut its guidance for its profit margin for 2025 to 2%, down from 5% to 7% previously. Shares tumbled 7%.

Lamborghini and McLaren have also said over the past year that they would delay plans to launch electric models, citing weak demand.

Ferrari has long been the gold standard for luxury auto makers. Since 1947, Maranello has always been careful to maintain its heritage, keeping tight control of shipments in a strategy that founder Enzo Ferrari often described as always delivering “one less car than the market demands.”

But if the Prancing Horse can’t drum up enough demand to make the Elettrica a hit, then perhaps its stock has run out of road.

Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com