Tucked inside Canoo's 2023 earnings report is a nugget regarding the use of CEO Tony Aquila's private jet — just one of many expenses that illustrates the
Canoo reimburses Aquila Family Ventures, an entity owned by the CEO, for use of an aircraft. In 2023, Canoo spent $1.7 million on this reimbursement — that’s double the amount of revenue it generated. Canoo paid Aquila Family Ventures $1.3 million in 2022 and $1.8 million in 2021 for use of the aircraft.
In other words, he uses company profit to pay his own private company to pay for his rides.
My dad was a C-suite at a major telecom company. The CEO also had a private plane that the company would then pay him to use lol. This was like 20 years ago and thought it was a bit shady back then.
God I hate Canoo. I was so into the design the first time I saw a photo, and it's felt like vaporware ever since. Always seems to be 6 months from delivering something, some new deal signed with Walmart getting publicity and stuff like that without anything to show for it.
I doubt the guy needs a private jet, but the company only made like $800k last year, the rest of the company's expenses were like $250 mil. For a startup I would guess they'd argue they're in the pre revenue phase.
Why the hell did I listen to some rando on Wallstreetbets and bought that stock I will never know. I refuse to sell it though since it's a good reminder to not get sucked into that again.
I did that with a weed-adjacent stock I got some years ago for fun, it went all the way to 0 I never sold it to keep it as a reminder not to be a dumbass and treat stocks like the casino. Now it's gone though it got re-incorporated and I guess now they're gone. These days it's VWCE and chill for me.
Canoo has revenue? They’re not selling cars yet. Probably ought to be better with the runway cash but pretty much all their expenses are going to exceed their revenues to they’re making cars.