Posted on 02/23/2024 7:00:39 AM PST by Red Badger
EV startup stocks Rivian (RIVN) and Lucid (LCID) sank Thursday after both companies reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue late Wednesday, and announced they are not ramping up production in 2024.
Rivian reported Wednesday a loss of $1.36 per share in Q4 with sales doubling to $1.31 billion. Wall Street expected a loss of $1.35 and revenue totaling $1.28 billion. Looking to 2024, Rivian said it expects production of 57,000 vehicles, remaining flat compared with 2023. The EV startup also predicts consumer and commercial vehicle deliveries to grow by low single-digits in 2024.
The company also announced that it predicts vehicle deliveries in Q1 2024 to be about 10%-15% lower than in Q4 2023 and that it is laying off 10% of its salaried workers.
Elon Musk Weighs In On Rivian Stock Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, late Wednesday that based on Rivian's quarterly cash on hand, the company could go bankrupt in around six quarters.
"Maybe that trajectory will change, but so far it hasn't," Musk said.
Rivian CFO Claire McDonough told investors Wednesday the company remains "confident that our cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments can fund our operations through 2025."
"We aim to maintain a strong balance sheet position by continuing to drive cost efficiencies and improve our vehicle unit economics, while opportunistically evaluating a variety of capital markets available to Rivian ranging across the capital structure," McDonough said on the earnings call.
Rivian stock plunged 25.6% during Thursday's market action and continued to angle lower early Friday. Meanwhile, Lucid stock dove 17% Thursday. Musk took to X once more Thursday afternoon claiming that Rivian needs to "cut costs massively and the exec team needs to live in the factory or they will die."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
I’m sure that goes on- likely more than we realize- amazing how many gov peeps get a job in gov, @ around $150,000 or so a year, but they suddenly ammass fortunes trading.
Yo,probably onow Bout the following app called capitol watch, but if not, here is a site that explains it a bit, but I suspect that it probably is not real time, which would prevent folks from the actual gains that the poli5icians themselves get
I was just about to take your advice and then it hit me . . . .
Sell the Rivian and take the loss and short it to make up the difference. I agree with Elon, it’ll go BK before too long.
Translation of economic, lingual contortion: "We have no future."
Meanwhile, despite a decline in demand for EVs, Tesla continues on a trajectory to become the world’s most valuable company. (It’s experience in robotics will prove helpful.)
We live near the foothills 40 miles from Seattle on the West side of the Cascades. EVs are very popular here but not necessarily because they are practical.
A few years ago people were bragging about owning Prius and other Hybrid vehicles. But in the last few years if you are a young man who wants a vehicle which will impress a lefty woman... you need an EV. Or if you are just a lefty who wants to impress other lefties... you need an EV. For a long time in this part of the country passenger vehicles have been used more to project an image than to be practical. That is not going to change.
In the Southeast people tend to be more practical than those living in the rest of the country. Your assessment about the practicality is probably about right. It is hard to know especially with all the skewed statistics released by government agencies.
In our area the vehicle insurance rates for EV’s have been taking off... largely because any scrape, nick or dent on the battery compartment might indicate to the dealer that your warranty has become invalid because of abuse and your insurance company needs to purchase a new battery which with the high depreciation rates associated with most EVs is worth more than your car. I think that this was an unexpected development that should be concerning to anyone considering the purchase of an EV.
this past summer, a multiplicity of Rivians were zipping about here in Boulder County, and even though this is the EV hibernation season in Colorado right now, this winter has been exceptionally mild with a few Teslas still tooling about, ALL of the Rivians except one or two that are obviously brand new have left the roads ... so, i’m thinking that might be more a function of vehicle failure than current climate ... i really can’t imagine buying a brand new vehicle
model from a brand new manufacturer, ESPECIALLY a brand new EV model from a brand new EV manufacturer ...
RIVN is down from 15.4 to 10 during the previous 48 hours ...
LCID is down from 3.6 to 3 during the previous 48 hours ...
Absolutely not true. Elon Musk is a very intelligent person. My guess is that he will continue diversifying his portfolio. The trajectory of Tesla is based largely on expectations of future growth. These expectations are fickle, and I do not believe that Tesla's experience in robotics will make much if any difference.
The public is quickly losing its fascination with electric vehicles despite massive amounts of goading by governments around the world. Tesla will be facing a strong headwind in the future. Almost everyone's most hated big tech company, Microsoft just reached $3 Trillion in market value and is likely to push Apple off it's pedestal soon.
Tesla isn't even in the top ten any more, and has been losing value since it peaked in October of 2021. Someone is blowing smoke up your butt.
“Edsel was good looking by comparison”
and some are still operational and you can probably get some of the parts
when EV companies like Lucid and Rivian go belly up, within months (maybe weeks in some cases), their products will be little more than lawn ornaments ... i have no pity for the fools who took out $75,000 loans for their lawn ornaments ...
Look at the 5 year chart............
If an EV sees its shadow will we have six more weeks of charging?..................
Musk had the idea with Teslas to make what he called "structural batteries" where the battery is kinda built into the frame. Unfortunately that means those Teslas get damaged batteries even with the slightest jarring. Another issue is if driving regulations (I think this is more in Canada than the US) state that even modular batteries have to have the entire battery replaced if part of it is. Mine (and Teslas) have that style of modular battery to minimize repair cost by replacing on the damaged portion of the battery. But that's no good if Canadian regulations force you to replace the whole battery anyway. Another, again this is based on regulations so check your area before buying an EV, is if the slightest scratch on the battery casing requires replacing the battery.
So far my insurance rates haven't gone up for the EV. I mean, it did when I had to replace my wife's ICE crossover anyway and chose to replace it with an EV crossover. But most of the increase was from switching from liability only insurance (what we had for years since we drove nothing but old used cars anyway, and still have on the old ICE pickup) to full coverage for the new car. Plus I'm sure it was a little more for the fact that the EV is more expensive than a comparable ICE car. But that's it.
And there's no EV rider in the premiums, nor for that matter on my home owners insurance either for the EV or the solar equipment. Though I did increase my coverage on my homeowners to account for replacing the solar equipment too in case of tornado (it's an Alabama thing to worry more about tornadoes than fires LOL). All of that has to be considered before getting an EV and/or solar (I wouldn't think about either EV's or solar if I lived as far north as you do).
However, I'll admit if I lived where you did I might do the math and even experiment with a pico wind turbine to see if it would be feasible to make myself a little more energy self-reliant. I'm against windmills and solar for the grid, but I'm all for free American citizens looking for any way we can to be more self-reliant -- especially with energy since that seems to be one of the main ways the control-freak Dims try to control us. I doubt decentralized wind power would be as efficient in Washington State as what we can do with solar in Alabama (in the past 12 months only 20% of my power had to be pulled from the grid to power my all electric house, including charging the EV for 15K miles charged at home). I only wish there was a way we could each drill our oil and refine it to gasoline, or drill our own natural gas. Unfortunately our only access to those energy sources is through over regulated drilling and refining and shipping processes. If I was honest, that's the main reason I have an EV -- I can provide most of the power for it on my own (for local driving).
“Microsoft just reached $3 Trillion in market value and is likely to push Apple off it’s pedestal soon.”
Microsoft is the 800-pound gorilla. It certainly has experience exploiting IP. They also have a first-to-market advantage on widely adopted AI with their investment in OpenAI. But a lot of pivotal milestones in this sector have not been reached yet. Understanding and developing AI is an ongoing endeavor.
“Tesla isn’t even in the top ten any more, and has been losing value since it peaked in October of 2021. Someone is blowing smoke up your butt.”
LOL. Number 11 ain’t bad. Was probably overvalued in the past. Even Musk said so. Often long-term expectations are what drive overvaluation.
Musk believes general-purpose robots will be Tesla’s number one product in the not-too-distant future.
With Musk at the helm, Tesla is uniquely positioned in this market space because he is among the top dozen leaders in AI worldwide.
Of course, none of us know the future with certainty and specificity. Time will tell.
VinFast (VFS) - 52 week high $93
Oh, my!
At the $93 high, you could have bought one hundred, 12 month, $60 Put Options (10,000 shares - makes money when stock price declines) for a couple thousand dollars!
Close to $550,000 profit, for a minor risk.
Short term federal capital gain tax at 37%. Washington state new cap gain tax is 7%, above $250,000.
Take home pay on that trade - close to $400,000.
Sorry - I am an old man (and former day trader) who still loves to dream.
As of yesterday...
MSFT - $3.06 trillion market cap
AAPL - $2.85 trillion market cap
However, just yesterday I read that MSFT is getting negative push back on its best AI business software app.
My own opinion...
Where - exactly - is any AI software creating new wealth or enhancing profits?
I do not see it. In fact, the AI features that MSFT has added to its Bing search engine are close to worthless, even pointless and obstructive.
Artificial Intelligence = two oxymorons in one!
there’s nothing artificial or intelligent about AI, just the usual garbage-in-garbage-out behavior of all programmatic data processing, but in the case of AI deliberately and heavily biased towards leftist fascism ...
it’s also doubtful that AI can come up with anything that hasn’t already been thought up and pre-recorded by actual humans or pre-recorded by other data processing output from software programmed by actual human ...
claims of AI speeding up research are nothing more than the usual ability of pretty much any special-purpose software designed to detect patterns by sifting through large amounts of specialized data, something humans COULD do if there was enough of them and they had enough time ...
remember: we landed people on the moon in 1969 with equipment and trajectories designed, manufactured and launched with little more than slide rules and multitudes of manual draftsmen ... the first TI and HP scientific calculators had yet to be invented in 1969 ... and yes, there was an itty-bitty discrete-built computer onboard the Apollos to handle the complex real-time guidance and stabilization tasks, but that too was designed without the help of CAD ...
“Where - exactly - is any AI software creating new wealth or enhancing profits?”
Many types of economic activity do not create wealth but merely create wealth transfer. Therefore, lots of businesses do not create wealth.
However, you raise a good point. Wealth is created, in general, when work gets done. God gives each of us 24 hours in each day. Most of us trade that time for money by working. Some people are smart enough to buy as much time as they can and spend it very frugally. Instead of working and trading time for money, they let their money work for them.
I categorize the creation of wealth in 3 ways: working, (e.g. building something), conversion of natural resources to work (e.g. oil production), and making work more efficient (e.g. economies of scale, logistics, inventions, and so forth). Perhaps the third category could be expanded so that we include other types of innovations where there are new things that people want (i.e. that they never wanted before because they didn’t exist).
Maybe, in a way, even work and ingenuity are ways of converting natural resources (such as time, intelligence, and creativity) into wealth.
With that longwinded backstop, I’d say AI is essentially a time-saving invention. It will create wealth by making work more efficient. I’ve personally saved many hours using the rudimentary AI that is available for free.
There are a lot of assumptions about human consciousness that go into AI research. Some are biased in favor of humans. Others are biased in favor of the exponential growth of computing technology.
A lot of people use Internet searches to get the answers to specific questions. AI has the potential to make this process far more efficient. These searches are very valuable, as Google illustrates. AI is unquestionably a disruptive force in this market. Who will win the AI wars (or if we will all lose) is the trillion-dollar question.
We have basically no wind or solar options at our house; it is completely surrounded by tall fir trees so we are shaded from both the sun and the wind.
I have had a lifelong interest in alternative forms of energy generation and alternative energy for transportation. I have built both electric and gasoline powered bicycles in the past.
I looked into getting a natural gas compressor to run our cars using compressed natural gas. The problem here is that our governor and legislature have taken aim at natural gas and imposed a substantial tax increase this year and are going to be raising the tax each and every year in the future until natural gas becomes unaffordable.
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