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EV start-up Rivian is valued at $86 billion after market debut, higher than Ford
https://www.cnbc.com ^ | PUBLISHED WED, NOV 10 20219:19 AM ESTUPDATED WED, NOV 10 20216:42 PM EST | Lora Kolodny - Annie Palmer

Posted on 11/11/2021 7:37:48 AM PST by Red Badger

KEY POINTS

Shares of Rivian, an electric vehicle start-up backed by Amazon and Ford, opened at $106.75 per share on its first trading on Wednesday.

At its opening price, Rivian is already worth more than automakers Ford and GM.

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Rivian Automotive shares ended the day up 29% in their debut Wednesday, giving the Amazon and Ford-backed electric vehicle start-up a market valuation of $86 billion after one of the biggest IPOs this year.

Shares of Rivian originally priced at $78 a piece Tuesday night, but popped more than 50% Wednesday when it opened at $106.75 per share, before paring some of those gains later in the afternoon.

At its opening price, Rivian had an implied valuation of $91 billion. That puts Rivian past the market cap of Ford ($77 billion) and on par with General Motors ($86 billion). It’s still worth a fraction of electric vehicle pioneer Tesla, which has a market cap of more than $1 trillion.

Rivian, which trades under the symbol “RIVN” on the Nasdaq, has attracted intense interest from investors looking to capitalize on the fast-growing EV market. But the company has yet to establish a business model and expects no more than $1 million in revenue for the third quarter.

Amazon’s 20% stake is now worth about $17 billion, and Ford’s 12% stake is valued at over $10 billion.

Amazon said in September that its equity investments, including Rivian, were worth $3.8 billion. Two months later its Rivian stake alone is worth almost five times that amount.

While Ford executives have billed their Rivian relationship as a strategic investment, the company’s Lincoln division had previously planned to build electric vehicles with the upstart. Those plans were abandoned during the pandemic.

Rivian opens for trading, hits $106.75

Amazon, which is converting its fleet to delivery vehicles that run on renewable energy, revealed in 2019 that it was purchasing thousands of vehicles from Rivian. More recent filings show Amazon has some exclusive rights to Rivian’s battery-electric delivery vehicles for a minimum of four years, with the right of first refusal after that.

Amazon has ordered 100,000 Rivian vehicles to be delivered by 2030. The companies plan to have 10,000 new Rivian-Amazon delivery vehicles on the road as early as next year.

Besides its fleet business, Rivian beat Tesla, GM and Ford to the market with a fully electric pickup, the R1T. It plans to launch a seven-passenger battery-electric SUV, the R1S, in December, according to an October prospectus.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, who has a Ph.D. from the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded Rivian in 2009. The company’s headquarters is in Irvine, California, and it has a vehicle assembly plant in Normal, Illinois.

The company says its factory in Illinois has the capacity to produce up to 150,000 vehicles per year. About 65,000 of those should be R1T pickup trucks and SUVs, and about 85,000 should be the company’s RCV commercial delivery vans, Rivian said in financial filings.

But Rivian is still a relative upstart, and it hasn’t started generating real revenue. Rivian said in its prospectus that it will lose up to $1.28 billion in the third quarter, while revenue will range from zero to $1 million.

It also hasn’t produced its electric vehicles in very high volumes yet. It’s not clear how quickly it can ramp up production, especially amid the global chip shortage and port constraints that have plagued automakers this year.

Rivian said in an amendment to its S-1 filing that it has a backlog of pre-orders for 55,400 R1T and R1S vehicles from customers in North America and plans to deliver these by the end of 2023.

New legislation awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature will provide $7.5 billion in federal grants to build a national network of electric vehicle charging stations, and Rivian could stand to benefit. Scaringe has emphasized that Rivian vehicles are ideal for people with a sense of adventure and a love of the outdoors. As such, the company is placing charging stations in out of the way destinations, like state or national parks.

Rivian counted 6,274 employees as of the end of June.

One of its former executives recently sued Rivian accusing the company of having a “toxic bro culture,” wrongfully terminating her employment there, and in so doing, costing her “millions of dollars in unvested equity on the eve of the company’s IPO.”

In the lawsuit, Laura Schwab — who previously led Aston Martin’s U.S. operations — also claims the company dismissed concerns she had raised regarding Rivian’s business, including its “ability to deliver on its promises to investors.”


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections; US: Michigan
KEYWORDS: amazon; elonmusk; ford; generalmotors; governmentmotors; keywordtrolls; lucid; michigan; rivian; scam; subsidized; tesla
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To: Nathan _in_Arkansas

The thing is, the EV industry would probably develop faster and better without taxpayer money based simply on the idea that once government money is involved then the efficiencies and speed of advancement inherent in strictly private capitalistic ventures slows to a crawl. I think EVs are our future especially as commuter vehicles just wish government would stand clear.


41 posted on 11/11/2021 9:22:55 AM PST by ARW
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To: TexasGator

Too bad AAA retired those vehicles.

"The trucks were equipped with Level 2 and Level 3 chargers and would provide about 10-15 minutes of charge. That should be enough to get you to a charging station nearby. According to Torque News, the trucks and chargers were retired sometime before 2019. AAA still offers to tow the vehicles, but it cannot recharge on the side of the road.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/what-happens-when-your-electric-vehicle-runs-out-of-charge/

42 posted on 11/11/2021 9:29:25 AM PST by tlozo
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To: tlozo
"Too bad AAA retired those vehicles."

AAA is now affiliated with Sparkcharge.


43 posted on 11/11/2021 9:37:40 AM PST by TexasGator (UF)
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To: Red Badger
Thanks Red Badger. There are a couple Jim Cramer vids about the IPO, both interesting to some extent. Rivian's truck is gorgeous IMHO, a few years back the prototype was at auto shows and caught a lot of eyes, it's got camping in mind and looks like a "real" pickup compared with the Cybertruck.

However, when I used the three quarters of 2021 Tesla vehicle production figured against the entire year (24/7 production rate), I got 71 produced per hour (the actual figure, IOW, is higher than that), and Rivian's produced about 160 vehicles so far.

The biz plan calls for a production figure by 2030 that is not likely to be achieved. I think it's a good stock to hold, after the price craters a bit. And I think it is going to crater, as some IPOs do when the froth stops.

44 posted on 11/11/2021 10:01:26 AM PST by SunkenCiv (When there's no more recourse to law, all that remains is recourse to lawlessness.)
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To: SunkenCiv

45 posted on 11/11/2021 10:04:08 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Flick Lives

Where will the charging statins go, certainly not in any rural settings and how much corruption will be involved?
As to this company I see a big short in it’s future. Who will be able to afford those cars?

And yes where is all that electricity coming from to power all of it. Guess what is doesn’t exist and would be 10 years or more before enough capacity and expansion of the grid could happen. We would need probably at least 10 years or more of the world’s entire copper output to do it. AND THAT AIN’T HAPPENING!


46 posted on 11/11/2021 10:28:03 AM PST by Captain Peter Blood (https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3804407/posts?q=1&;pag, and that)
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To: monkeyshine

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/11/bill-gates-bullish-on-using-nuclear-power-to-fight-climate-change.html

Let’s see, add a nuke plant in Wyoming and mr. bill’s land holdings of farms and ranches throughout the US … hmmm.

USA 2.0? Or mega-ark (Logan’s run)? Maybe too much sci-fi in my reading history.


47 posted on 11/11/2021 12:23:05 PM PST by Liaison (TANSTAAFL)
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To: Liaison

He’s probably right on the nuclear plant question. But there is something unseemly about these people being invited to “climate change” negotiations and meetings. They are clearly conflicted to put it kindly. They buy up all the mineral sources needed for batteries, and then get to negotiate how much and how soon the taxpayers will pay to mine them?

Government selling us out faster than ever. And right in the open for anyone who cares to look.


48 posted on 11/11/2021 12:46:39 PM PST by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: monkeyshine

China is trying to corner or at least control the known supplies of materials to make batteries ( solar panels, power production and aerospace too). That means others that want in on now or have future supplies not controlled by Chinese companies have to buy now and there by styme the Chinese government’s monopoly. They have to buy up and outbid Asian companies now as soon as the resources are known. Afghistan is an example as the wanted minerals are in open sites but the locals waring made extraction impossible. Now that the taliban are in charge (one side control) China will be teething to get there. All the western countries and Russia have a bad taste to the taliban so why not use China to mine it for cash?


49 posted on 11/11/2021 4:59:33 PM PST by Liaison (TANSTAAFL)
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To: Liaison

You mean the Taliban letting the Chinese “mine it for cash”? If so yes, totally agree. Their emissaries are there as I type negotiating to buy everything from minerals to helicopters to night vision goggles etc. Ironically I’ll suggest they are negotiating to run an oil pipeline from Iran, through Afghanistan, and into China. This will effectively break any attempt at embargo or sanctions against Iran emboldening them to build out their nuke program to the maximum.

Of course, this whole story is nonsense. Global warming is a total scam designed to extort taxpayer money and send it to a select few billionaires, funds, and Senator’s sons. And to the Chinese communists. As you said they will have 90% of the minerals needed for batteries, and they build nearly all the windmills and solar panels. Ross Perot was right there is a “giant sucking sound” except he was wrong, it’s not coming from Mexico.

Sure, there’s a lot of money to be made in the other 10% of minerals so Bezos and Gates will get in on the action. We’ll need nuclear too because we can’t replace carbon based energy from solar and wind in the next 12 years. It’s just not practically on the horizon. If we really want carbon neutral energy nuclear is the only short-mid term option.

I am not against clean air and clean water of course. But forget about us Westerners. What about all the developing countries? Or underdeveloped countries. Carbon energy remains the cheapest and most efficient means to alleviate their blight, droughts, poverty, economic position for the next several generations. These countries are in no position to plunk down $500 billion for solar crapola. They need easy to deploy, cheap energy sources to desalinate water, run water pipes, run sewage lines, grow and harvest crops, and develop internal industries to lift themselves out of poverty. This COP26 BS is really a big F.U. to the impoverished nations of the world. We can bribe their leaders with shiny objects - that is all we have done for decades. But if we really want to see them lifted out of poverty, cheap oil and gas is the fastest and easiest route to get them there. Then, later, they can reposition from a position of greater relative strength if they want to.


50 posted on 11/11/2021 9:08:27 PM PST by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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