Fisker in talks with five carmakers for production capacity partnership

U.S. electric vehicle startup Fisker is negotiating with five carmakers over a partnership to secure additional production capacity for its vehicles, its Chief Executive Henrik Fisker said on Thursday.

Shares in the company were up 3% in premarket trading on Monday, ahead of its earnings release.

"We have two cars that are almost ready. We can bring them to market fast - we just need the capacity," Fisker said, speaking to Reuters in Berlin.

The CEO told Reuters in May he was exploring partnerships with everyone from suppliers to tech companies to scale up production.

On Thursday, he said he was in negotiations with five "traditional car companies" and hoped to pick a partner in the coming months.

The California-based startup has one vehicle on the market - an SUV called "Ocean", being launched from a factory in Austria operated by a unit of Magna International Inc.

Two further models, a pickup and a smaller SUV, are due to be released by 2025. The SUV, called PEAR, will be built with Foxconn in Ohio, but further capacity is needed for both models.

It has so far produced 5,000 units of the Ocean car, according to a September update.

Still, it cut its annual production target in August and adjusted pricing in October as it grappled with a slowdown in electric-vehicle demand.

The chief executive was confident the company was still on the road to profit, and said it would report a double-digit margin this year, in line with its annual forecast of an 8-12% gross margin for 2023.

It is due to release third-quarter results on Monday, after reporting a loss of 25 cents per share in the second quarter.

(Reporting by Christina Amann, Writing by Victoria Waldersee; editing by David Evans)