Electric vehicle maker Canoo is abandoning its Torrance headquarters for Walmart's home turf.
The company announced as part of its third quarter earnings call Nov. 15 that it will soon move its corporate headquarters to Bentonville, Arkansas as it moves up their production timeline.
Canoo CEO Tony Aquila said the electric vehicle maker will also base manufacturing and research and development facilities in Fayetteville, Arkansas and expand existing factory space in Pryor and Tulsa, Oklahoma to handle more of its software development, finance and customer service operations.
"Our discipline continues to be big news or no news. Therefore, we will accelerate our advanced manufacturing production in the U.S. to begin before Q4 2022," Aquila said in an earnings statement.
Canoo CEO Tony Aquila
Part of the incentive for Canoo to move operations to these two states is agreements it inked with each of them that would guarantee financial incentives of roughly $400 million. That is on top of an additional nearly $100 million in vehicle orders Canoo expects to come from states and local universities, Aquila said.
Aquia said he expects the facilities to employ 1,200 people in the region.
"We are bigger fans of owning our own facilities than we are contract manufacturing, there are inherent risks with that (and) having it out of your control," Aquila added.
The move is a loss for Southern California, which has been home to a clutch of electric vehicle startup companies including Fisker, Karma and Faraday Future. Canoo still has yet to deliver any of its planned vehicles and is looking for an area that's cheaper than Los Angeles to do business in and cut costs.
Aquila said in the statement Canoo most of the company's manufacturing will happen at a facility in Pryor, Okla. which Canoo announced earlier this year.
To meet production demand, Canoo said it expanded its workforce by 22% to about 800 people by the close of the third quarter. In October, the carmaker said that Panasonic will supply batteries for its upcoming electric SUV.
The company is working on its main car, a boxy, electric "lifestyle vehicle" it describes as a "loft on wheels'' that it aims to begin selling by next year. It's also developing an all-electric pickup truck and multi-purpose delivery vehicle for businesses. In the industrial space, Canoo has a handful of competitors already closer to delivering, though -- including Glendale-based Xos Trucks, which already has an agreement to deliver 120 electric trucks to FedEx Ground by the fourth quarter of this year.
The carmaker reported no revenue this quarter, compared to the same time last year, when the company brought in nearly $2.6 million. Instead, operating losses mounted, increasing to roughly $107 million from roughly $27.2 million in Q3 2020.
Canoo's net loss for the third quarter was roughly $80.9 million, up from a net loss of $23.4 million last year.
Canoo said it expects operating expenses in the upcoming quarter to be between $95 and $115 million, and estimated it'll spend between $60 and $80 million in capital expenditures during that time.
While Canoo's stock was down at market close today, it was up at least 4.7% in after-hours trading to roughly $8.72 per share as the news of its new headquarters and deals outside California reached investors.
To meet production demand, Canoo said it expanded its workforce by 22% to about 800 people by the close of the third quarter.
Editors note: This story has been updated with comments from Aquila.
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The survey found 60% of the respondents, primarily women, were balancing increased caretaking roles with work or school responsibilities. And while caretaking responsibilities grew, 49% of respondents said their workload also increased during the pandemic.
“The pandemic threw a wrench into lots of folks' experiences both professionally and academically,” said Kathryne Cooper, a health tech investor who sits on the advisory board of WiSTEM. “So we need to acknowledge that.”
In the L.A. area, an increasing number of childcare startups are aiming to address this massive challenge that is a growing national crisis. The U.S. has long dealt with a crippling childcare infrastructure plagued by low wages and a labor shortage in preschools and daycares, but the COVID-19 crisis made it worse. During the pandemic, women left the workforce due to the lack of childcare and caretaking resources. By 2021, women made up the lowest percentage of the workforce since 1988, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Despite the pandemic forcing everyone indoors, caretaking duties fell disproportionately on women.
“I almost actually left my job because everything that I looked at was either waitlisted or the costs were so astronomical that it probably made sense for me to stay at home rather than pay someone to actually look after my child,” said Jessica Chang, the CEO of childcare startup WeeCare.
Brella's Playa Vista-based childcare center lobby.Photo courtesy of Brella
The Marina del Rey-based WeeCare, one of the startups that helps people open their own childcare facilities, announced it raised $12 million in April (to go along with an additional $5 million in bridge funding raised during the pandemic). The company helps people build daycare centers and works with employers to provide access to WeeCare centers and construct child care benefits programs.
Some of these startups strive to boost the number of daycare centers by helping operators with financial costs, licensing fees and scheduling. Wonderschool, a San Francisco-based child care startup, raised $25 million in January and assisted with hundreds of childcare facilities in L.A.-based Playground, which raised $3 million in seed funding last year per PitchBook. Playground acts as an in-house platform for childcare providers to communicate with staff and parents, track attendance, report student behavior and provide automatic invoicing services.
L.A.-based Brella, which launched in 2019, raised $5 million in seed funding in January to create a tech-enabled daycare scheduling platform that could meet the demand of flexible childcare as parents navigate a hybrid work environment, and recently opened a new location in Hollywood. The startup aims to address the labor shortage among childcare workers by paying its workers roughly $25 an hour and offering mental health benefits and career development opportunities for its educators.
“It's this huge disconnect in our society because these are really important people who are doing arguably one of the most important educational jobs,” said Melanie Wolff, co-founder of childcare startup Brella. “They often don't get benefits. They don't have a lot of job security.”
Venture capital funding has poured into the relatively new childcare sector. A slew of parent-tech companies aimed at finding flexible child care and monitoring children saw $1.4 billion worth of venture investments in 2021, according to PitchBook, largely to meet the demands of parents in a pandemic era who have more flexible work commutes and require more tech-enabled solutions.
“I think a lot of it has to do with what employers expect for workers,” said Darby Saxbe, an associate professor of psychology and family relationships expert at USC. “There's still a lot more stigma for men to build their work around caregiving responsibilities–there's a lot of evidence that men are often discouraged from taking paternity leave, even if it's available.”
WeeCare is one of several startups updating the childcare space with technology and flexibility.
Photo courtesy of WeeCare
Childcare benefits are also becoming a more attractive incentive as workers grapple with unorthodox work schedules in a hybrid setting.
“Employers, because of COVID, were having a hard time retaining and recruiting employees,” said Chang. “And they were actually incentivized to actually find a solution to help the employees.”
WeeCare primarily partners with employers of essential workers, like schools, hospitals and grocery stores, and the benefits programs account for the majority of WeeCare’s revenue.
Childcare works are part of a massive labor shortage in caretaker roles that also include nurses, and health aids for the eldery. These workers, which allow women to maintain careers in STEM and other high-paying industries, are vital, according to Saxbe.
“Women can advance in the workplace,” Saxbe said. “But if there's no support at home and there is no one who is helping take care of kids and elderly people, women can't just advance in a vacuum.”
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