Wedbush Securities, a privately held investment firm based in Los Angeles, announced July 20 it has started coverage of Electric Last Mile Solutions (Nasdaq: ELMS), with an outperform rating and 12-month initial price target of $17 per share.

In making a bullish case for the share price, analysti Dan Ives writes that ELMS captures a larger portion of the last-mile delivery market than expected and becomes a major player in the EV market.

Ives makes the following key comments in the Wedbush-ELMS Initiation Report:

• “We believe the current climate is very favorable for ELMS at this point as we are in the first inning of a $5 trillion market opportunity over the next decade for the EV sector as the auto industry is going through one of the biggest transformations not seen since the 1950s.”

• “As commercial fleets are shifting from gas to electric vehicles, ELMS is well-positioned to capture this industry-wide shift over the next decade. With over 45,000 pre-orders, we believe the company is just beginning to capitalize on the new generation of delivery commercial electric vehicles.”

• “ELMS is taking a very different approach when compared to many other EV startups, as ELMS plans to use existing platforms from other vehicle manufacturers as the foundation for its vehicle designs rather than engineer its vehicles from the ground up as seen with its competitors.”

Ives points out that ELMS will benefit from outsourced, third-party platforms, subsystems, and components that will propel ELMS to the market at a faster rate with proven already proven, reliable vehicles, which is an important value consideration for fleets.

ELMS can also potentially “save hundreds of millions of dollars on product engineering, validation testing, and capital-intensive manufacturing tooling and processes,” Ives writes.

Wedbush Securities’ Capital Markets Group offers products and services to institutional and corporate clients, and includes equities sales and trading divisions bolstered by  research and analysis from our equities experts. As of February 2021, Wedbush Securities has about $2.4 billion under management with about 6,000 clients.