A $2.9 billion deal with Tesla and L&F Co. has collapsed into just $7,386 on paper, a 99% plunge that has blown a massive hole in the company’s value and crushing the fortune of the family that own it by over $660 million.
Hur Jae-hong, chairman and CEO of L&F, watched his listed holdings fall from $800 million to $134 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The contract, once hailed as game-changing, has officially been downgraded to almost nothing. Tesla’s Cybertruck delays and weak customer demand choked the order before it could deliver.
Tesla’s Cybertruck delay kills a key EV battery deal
L&F builds high-nickel cathodes for electric vehicle batteries. These were supposed to go straight to Tesla for the Cybertruck. But that model ran into constant delays, and buyers just didn’t bite.
No one’s seen much of the angular truck, and L&F’s order quietly died behind the scenes. The company confirmed this week that the massive order is now worth less than $10,000.
The stock market didn’t wait for the news. L&F shares have been dropping since their 2023 peak, when the Tesla contract was first announced. They’ve now plunged more than 70%, dragged down by the collapse of the order and a general slump in EV demand worldwide.
It didn’t help that L&F was leaning heavily on LG Energy Solution Ltd., its top customer, and investor confidence began to crack long before Monday’s shock filing. Still, analysts say this isn’t a full break-up between L&F and Elon Musk’s company.
“L&F had probably already stopped supplying cathodes to Tesla since last year,” said Changmin Lee, an analyst at KB Securities. The materials were only meant for some Cybertruck models, and with that project stalling, the deliveries never picked up. Lee added that the recent filing “will likely be extremely limited” in terms of market impact, since the contract had already been factored out of forecasts.
L&F’s long-term partnerships now under pressure
Even though the Cybertruck plan crashed, L&F’s business with Tesla still supplies Model Y components indirectly through LG Energy Solution, which accounts for around 80% of its total sales. That pipeline is running without disruption for now.
But the loss of the direct Tesla order smashed L&F’s diversification strategy.In 2021, the company inked a deal with Redwood Materials, the US battery recycler run by Tesla’s ex-CTO, JB Straubel.
That partnership was supposed to help L&F lower its dependence on LG Energy Solution to 50% by 2025. That goal now looks shaky.
There might still be a way out. Anna Lee, an analyst at Yuanta Securities Korea, said L&F is expected to begin production for Rivian in 2026, after securing a deal back in March. They’re also sending mid-nickel cathodes to SK On Co., used in Hyundai Motor’s EV batteries. That means they’ve still got irons in the fire.
“A short-term damper in investor sentiment is inevitable,” said Anna. “But there is an increasing possibility that the sector will regain attention in 2026, specifically centering on energy storage systems for AI data centers.”
Still, none of that changes the fact that a $2.9 billion Tesla contract just evaporated into dust, and L&F’s billionaire dreams were smashed into seven thousand bucks.
Claim your free seat in an exclusive crypto trading community – limited to 1,000 members.
Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/tesla-800m-wealth-setback-for-the-board/
