Yes. That has been my experience. That doesn’t mean that I am right though.
However, I would keep an eye on it. Keep checking and as long as you see that it is successfully backing up and it shows the time of the last backup, I think you will be OK. But like I said, the Never message should also go away.
I find all things iCloud to be a little flakey. I also backup with iTunes and when I do, I shut off the iCloud backup option until the iTunes backup is done. After I turn the iCloud backup on again, I will sometimes get a message that my iPhone or iPad hasn’t been backed up with iCloud in XX number of weeks which is ridiculous because before I shut off the iCloud backup, I saw that the last backup had indeed taken place successfully hours before or the night before.