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Nikola, the US electric car company, announced on November 17th that its chief financial officer, Anastasia Anastasiya Pasterick, who took office in March, would resign to "look for other opportunities". Nikola said it expected to complete the search for a new chief financial officer soon and said Pasterick would assist in the transition by December 1. In the meantime, key financial leaders of Nikola will report directly to Girsky, CEO of Nikola.

From the point of view of Pastrick's appointment, he has joined Nikola less than a year. On March 27, Nikola announced that CFO Kim Brady, the company's chief financial officer, would retire on April 7, and Pastrick took over from CFO.

Since August 2023, three senior Nikola executives have left. Michael Lohscheller, CEO of Nikola, and Carey Mendes, president of Nicholas Energy, resigned on August 4, 2023. Steve Girsky, who has been chairman of the company since September 2020, has been appointed Nikola CEO. In September 2023, Girsky hired Mary Chan, another former GM executive and a colleague of VectoIQ, as Nikola's first chief operating officer. In addition, according to the latest report, Trevor Milton, the founder of Nikola, is seeking probation. In a document filed with the court on the evening of Nov. 14, Milton's lawyer said he should have his sentence suspended in the Nov. 25 verdict, in part because he needed to take care of his sick wife. According to the report, probation officers calculated that according to federal sentencing guidelines, Milton should be sentenced to 17.5 to nearly 22 years in prison. Milton's lawyer said the sentence should range from 12 to 18 months.

Trevor Milton resigned on Sept. 20, 2020, after being accused of shorting. In October, Nikola said in a regulatory filing that its founder, Trevor Milton, had been ordered to pay about $165 million in compensation to the company. Nikola said an arbitration panel in New York ruled last week that it should receive the money from its founders to cover "costs and losses arising from government and regulatory investigations, including the company's settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in December 2021 and related civil penalties".

According to the data, Nikola was founded in 2014 by Trevor Milton, known as Tesla of the car industry, because Nikola and Tesla together are the name of American inventor Nicholas Tesla. In 2016, Nikola launched its first hydrogen truck product, the Nikola One, which is known as "the most advanced semi-trailer truck in the world so far". Trevor Milton said Nikola had been ahead of other automakers in technology for 10-15 years, boasting that Haikou had overtaken mainstream truck companies such as Daimler and Volvo within 1-2 years.

In February 2020, Nikola launched a new product, the Nikola Badge electric pickup truck, which was directly marked by Tesla CyberTruck after its launch. At that time, public data showed that Nikola had received orders for more than 14000 trucks by 2020, with potential sales of more than $10 billion. In this context, in June of the same year, Nikola successfully listed on NASDAQ through backdoor. At the end of the day, Trevor Milton was worth as much as $8.1 billion, becoming the first person in the world in the field of hydrogen fuel. Three days after listing, Nikola's share price doubled, with a market capitalization of up to $34 billion, surpassing Ford, a century-old car company, and Nikola was once regarded by the industry as "Tesla's strongest competitor."

But Nikola's highlights didn't last long. In September 2020, a short report exposed Nikola's scam, accusing founder Trevor Milton of lying to investors, and Nikola didn't have its own proprietary technology. On the 12th of the same month, Trevor Milton was charged with four counts of fraud. Eventually, Nikola pleaded guilty to the charges, and Trevor Milton resigned.

By October 2020, Nikola shares had plummeted by 50 per cent. Nikola also launched layoffs in June. At the time, Nikola said the job cuts were expected to reduce personnel-related cash spending by more than $50 million a year; by 2024, the company's annual cash expenditure was expected to fall below $400m.

In the first three quarters of 2023, Nikola posted revenue of $24.31 million, compared with $44.26 million a year earlier, and a net loss of $813 million, compared with $562 million a year earlier, according to the latest results. Of this total, third-quarter Nikola revenue was-$1.73 million, compared with $24.24 million in the same period last year, and a net loss of $426 million, compared with $236 million in the same period last year.

Like many other electric car startups, Nikola is running out of cash. Nikola's cash and equivalents increased to $362.8 million as of September 30, 2023, mainly through the sale of new shares, according to the results. Mr. Pastrick told analysts on a conference call on Nov. 2 that the money would be enough to cover the recall and run the business until 2024. However, Nikola said in a February 2023 government document that the company could run out of money within the next 12 months and might need to "modify or terminate" its business.

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