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Amazon-backed EV maker Rivian discloses nearly $1B losses in IPO filing

37 points by evo_9 5y ago

rado 5y ago
Cookie wall, so no idea what it says, but Rivian was a major player in the excellent Ewan McGregor documentary “Long Way Up” (2020)
- tdhz77 5y ago
  Great documentary, and really enjoyed watching Ewan drive an electric vehicle from South America to LA. It was possible 5 years ago, and it’s even easier today. The world is changing and this is a great thing.
- ObamaBinSpying 5y ago
  (Reuters) -Rivian Automotive, backed by Amazon.com Inc and Ford, disclosed losses of nearly $1 billion in the first half of the year, the electric-vehicle maker's U.S. IPO filing showed on Friday. The company has been investing aggressively in ramping up production of its electric vehicles, including its upscale all-electric R1T pickup truck which was launched last month beating out competition from more established rivals, such as Tesla Inc, General Motors and Ford. Rivian had about 48,390 preorders for its R1T pickup trucks and R1S SUVs in the United States and Canada as of last month. The company is currently pursuing a two-track strategy: building electric delivery vans for Amazon and developing an electric pickup and SUV brand aimed at affluent individuals. Amazon has ordered 100,000 of Rivian's electric delivery vans as part of the e-commerce giant's broader effort to cut its carbon footprint. Rivian said on Friday it will list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol "RIVN". Founded in 2009 as Mainstream Motors by R. J. Scaringe, the company changed its name to Rivian in 2011. "Rivian" is derived from "Indian River" in Florida, a place Scaringe frequented in a rowboat as a youth. Scaringe on Friday said the company would put 1% of equity in its environmental program called "Forever" that is aimed at helping address climate change and preserving wildlands and waterways. Rivian, which confidentially filed paperwork with regulators for an IPO in August, has not yet set terms for its offering. However, Reuters reported in September that it could seek a valuation of nearly $80 billion, raising up to $8 billion in its IPO. For the six months ended June 30, Rivian's net loss widened to $994 million from $377 million a year earlier, the company said in its filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are the lead underwriters for the Rivian IPO.
- vermasque 5y ago
  Yup! Also enjoyed the other two docs (Long Way Round and Long Way Down) but those were using non-electric vehicles.
- SaberTail 5y ago
  I'm watching that now, and it's definitely making me consider an electric motorcycle for my next bike.
f6v 5y ago
80 billion valuation on pre-orders is just another level.
- strulovich 5y ago
  Tesla is valued at 10 times that, and if you subscribe to the old-auto-industry-having-problems-to-compete-with-Tesla hypothesis, then Rivian has the potential to become another dominant car company in the market. It’s clearly a bet, but it’s not a disconnected from reality bet. In fact, in a world where tesla already pulled it off, it sounds more grounded than the Tesla story.
  - justicezyx 5y ago
    Tesla was the only one who "old-auto-industry-having-problems-to-compete-with-Tesla", the market space is not infinite. Now Rivian is certainly one who "old-auto-industry-having-problems-to-compete-with-Tesla", but there is another who can supposedly do it better? If Blueorigin cannot catch up SpaceX, there is no reason to believe Rivian can share the same market standing as Tesla.
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    Tesla’s market cap was $60B just two years ago, before model 3 production really ramped up, and the crazy stock bubble began. By that point, it’s first production car was a decade old, and the company was on the verge of hitting 1 million vehicles produced (March 2020). So yeah, $80B for a competitor in the pre-production stage seems quite steep.
    - postingawayonhn 5y ago
      Tesla's market cap was not tied to the number of cars it was shipping at any specific point but rather how much confidence investors had in their ability to execute on their plans and scale up in the future. When you look at Rivain's team + product + funding I think it's not unreasonable to have a high level of confidence in their ability to execute.
post_break 5y ago
It feels like Rivian is that gif of the truck about to hit that barricade but after every cut it just loops and never does. I would have expected it to start shipping but how many years has it been teased? Is there a firm launch date yet? I did see all the usual YouTubers post their PR campaign at the same time recently so it must be soon right? Right?
- rconti 5y ago
  I just saw my first one last week. It had manufacturer plates though. Last week was the big press launch, of production vehicles. Car and Driver is driving one across the Trans America Trail right now. I believe the first customer car rolled off the line Sept 20. First deliveries were supposed to have been in Sept. It looks like they have, in fact, started. If you try to order one now they say "January delivery" which surprised me that they could promise so soon with so many preorders.
reilly3000 5y ago
They have zero revenue because they haven’t shipped any vehicles yet which should start soon. They spent $1b to build factories and cars. Maybe I should buy when their stock opens if lots of people are missing this bit.
- bink 5y ago
  I'm not placing any bets on whether they'll succeed. But if they have roughly 50k pre-orders at ~$70k/each that's $3.5 billion in revenue. And while I'm sure not everyone who pre-ordered will actually make a purchase, there are still a ton of people who aren't aware Rivian exists who can fill that gap. And that's excluding Amazon's orders which they expect to make up most of their revenue.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- manquer 5y ago
  So Pre-revenue and Pre-Production and yet command $80 Billion valuation into an IPO. That is all good in the VC/PE world were investors have resources to evaluate and access to a lot of confidential data when evaluating a target. For retail investors like you and me, that is a enormous risk, neither have we the average investor the time or knowledge/skill and access to critical information to meaningfully evaluate this early stage company. There is lot of steps and risk from selling to your key investor to the entire market and to scale production to hundreds of thousands of units a year this valuation seems to have already priced in at negligible/zero .
pcurve 5y ago
"However, Reuters reported in September that it could seek a valuation of nearly $80 billion, raising up to $8 billion in its IPO." $80 billion??? It would be 95th on SP500. Sigh. Toyota = 300 billion vw = 140 billion Daimler = 95 billion. GM = 77 billion BMW = 55 billion Ford = 55 billion Honda = 55 billion. Hyundai = 42 billion Whatever happen to efficient market valuation?
- echelon 5y ago
  > Whatever happen to efficient market valuation? GME 13 billion AMC 19 billion HOOD 35 billion DOGE 29 billion Retail and memes.
  - reducesuffering 5y ago
    One of those is not like the other...
- adventured 5y ago
  > Whatever happen to efficient market valuation? Efficient market hypothesis is entirely fraudulent. It always will be. Fortunately, so investors can keep taking advantage of the endless market inefficiencies. EMH is the equivalent in market theory of believing the Earth is flat. A person has to be wildly irrational and detached from the ability to properly utilize basic reasoning skills in order to buy into it.
- 01100011 5y ago
  Haven't you seen the various mental gymnastics people use to value electric car mfgs? Sprinkle some technology on an otherwise low-margin industry and suddenly people think you have the next Google or Facebook. Nevermind that the big tech companies became so profitable because they make money off easily scaled SW. No, this time it's different!
- dntrkv 5y ago
  That just tells you how little faith everyone has in the existing players launching a competitive, modern EV. The Model S has been on the market for almost 10 years now and there is still zero competition from the large OEMs.
oliv__ 5y ago
Wait, you can IPO without actually having shipped anything?
varelse 5y ago
When you buy anything Amazon, it comes Alexa-enabled with the best engineering fungible staffing can provide.
- echelon 5y ago
  > with the best engineering fungible staffing can provide This is such a fantastic dig at Amazon and strikes at exactly what's wrong with their culture. It's a machine. The engineers don't matter. Rotten from the top. I honestly don't understand why anybody would want to work there. Better salaries and jobs exist.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - novok 5y ago
    You live in Seattle and the alternative HQ position is MSFT, and you got a good non-standard offer. If Amazon & MSFT were in the bay, I'm fairly certain they would clean up their acts.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nojito 5y ago
They have $3B cash on hand or enough to survive 3 more years selling zero cars.
jdhn 5y ago
I personally believe that out of all the electric car startups that have sprung up after Tesla, Rivian and Lucid are the 2 that are most likely to put out a product and potentially have some staying power, or get bought out. It's also worth noting that Ford has invested in Rivian (first or second major round I think?) in return for some of their tech. If you're a believer in the staying power of the F-150, then this could be viewed as a win for Ford as well.
- pcurve 5y ago
  I think Rivian and Lucid will not be around in 10 years. Legacy makers will still dominate. EV doesn't change the fundamental nature of the car sector, which is capital intensive, low-margin, and very buying cycle. However, longer term, EV will follow the path of Android as cars become more autonomous. Things like driving dynamics, active and passive safety innovations will matter less and less. The only thing that will matter at that point is data, software, and battery technology, which Tesla dominates. I wouldn't be surprised 20 years from now, if Tesla isn't even making any cars.
  - taurath 5y ago
    I don’t necessarily agree with most but it seems like Tesla becoming a battery company primarily is interesting enough to give it a look. The main reason they’d probably want to be a car company is margins - I’d bet the battery market blows up with competitors as it’s sort of doing now and it’s almost too much of a risk to be all in on just batteries, where if you’re a battery wholesaler any shift in say resource mining availability could create pressure, where if you have a decent margin product on the back of it you can “eat” those costs, and also aren’t beholden to other customers. The legacy auto industry doesn’t treat suppliers well.
- atombender 5y ago
  Rivian does seem like the real deal. I first noticed them when prototype versions of their SUV truck were used for the recent Apple TV+ series Long Way Up [1], where Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman ride electric motorcycles from Ushuaia to Los Angeles, with a production team following in those Rivian cars. The crew absolutely loves the Rivians, and as far as I remember, they only experience a minor hiccup. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Up
chrisgd 5y ago
“Rivian, an EV manufacturer whose investors include Amazon filed to go public. The move would offer a more liquid funding source for the company, in line with markets that are increasingly looking to invest in giant markets earlier.”
jppope 5y ago
Alternate title: "Rivian, who is aggressively investing in building their business, files for IPO" Just wondering when anyone in the media is going to figure out that it takes a f*ck load of money to build a modern auto manufacturer. Hell the incumbents aren't even willing to spend the money
- manquer 5y ago
  Yes it takes a lot of money to succeed in the auto biz, but that doesn't mean any companies spending a ton of money will automatically succeed. Retail investors/ Media do not have access to critical information it takes(or skill) to evaluate a early stage company like Rivian the kind a VC/PE would have. They are effectively pointing the problem of very early stage companies without revenue or production going for IPOs. Rivian is not even the first large one in the auto space doing a pre-revenue / pre-product IPO, tuSimple did one in April at $8.5 B valuation.

37 points by evo_9 5y ago

rado 5y ago

Cookie wall, so no idea what it says, but Rivian was a major player in the excellent Ewan McGregor documentary “Long Way Up” (2020)

tdhz77 5y ago
Great documentary, and really enjoyed watching Ewan drive an electric vehicle from South America to LA. It was possible 5 years ago, and it’s even easier today. The world is changing and this is a great thing.
ObamaBinSpying 5y ago
(Reuters) -Rivian Automotive, backed by Amazon.com Inc and Ford, disclosed losses of nearly $1 billion in the first half of the year, the electric-vehicle maker's U.S. IPO filing showed on Friday. The company has been investing aggressively in ramping up production of its electric vehicles, including its upscale all-electric R1T pickup truck which was launched last month beating out competition from more established rivals, such as Tesla Inc, General Motors and Ford. Rivian had about 48,390 preorders for its R1T pickup trucks and R1S SUVs in the United States and Canada as of last month. The company is currently pursuing a two-track strategy: building electric delivery vans for Amazon and developing an electric pickup and SUV brand aimed at affluent individuals. Amazon has ordered 100,000 of Rivian's electric delivery vans as part of the e-commerce giant's broader effort to cut its carbon footprint. Rivian said on Friday it will list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol "RIVN". Founded in 2009 as Mainstream Motors by R. J. Scaringe, the company changed its name to Rivian in 2011. "Rivian" is derived from "Indian River" in Florida, a place Scaringe frequented in a rowboat as a youth. Scaringe on Friday said the company would put 1% of equity in its environmental program called "Forever" that is aimed at helping address climate change and preserving wildlands and waterways. Rivian, which confidentially filed paperwork with regulators for an IPO in August, has not yet set terms for its offering. However, Reuters reported in September that it could seek a valuation of nearly $80 billion, raising up to $8 billion in its IPO. For the six months ended June 30, Rivian's net loss widened to $994 million from $377 million a year earlier, the company said in its filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are the lead underwriters for the Rivian IPO.
vermasque 5y ago
Yup! Also enjoyed the other two docs (Long Way Round and Long Way Down) but those were using non-electric vehicles.
SaberTail 5y ago
I'm watching that now, and it's definitely making me consider an electric motorcycle for my next bike.

f6v 5y ago

80 billion valuation on pre-orders is just another level.

strulovich 5y ago
Tesla is valued at 10 times that, and if you subscribe to the old-auto-industry-having-problems-to-compete-with-Tesla hypothesis, then Rivian has the potential to become another dominant car company in the market. It’s clearly a bet, but it’s not a disconnected from reality bet. In fact, in a world where tesla already pulled it off, it sounds more grounded than the Tesla story.
- justicezyx 5y ago
  Tesla was the only one who "old-auto-industry-having-problems-to-compete-with-Tesla", the market space is not infinite. Now Rivian is certainly one who "old-auto-industry-having-problems-to-compete-with-Tesla", but there is another who can supposedly do it better? If Blueorigin cannot catch up SpaceX, there is no reason to believe Rivian can share the same market standing as Tesla.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  Tesla’s market cap was $60B just two years ago, before model 3 production really ramped up, and the crazy stock bubble began. By that point, it’s first production car was a decade old, and the company was on the verge of hitting 1 million vehicles produced (March 2020). So yeah, $80B for a competitor in the pre-production stage seems quite steep.
  - postingawayonhn 5y ago
    Tesla's market cap was not tied to the number of cars it was shipping at any specific point but rather how much confidence investors had in their ability to execute on their plans and scale up in the future. When you look at Rivain's team + product + funding I think it's not unreasonable to have a high level of confidence in their ability to execute.

post_break 5y ago

It feels like Rivian is that gif of the truck about to hit that barricade but after every cut it just loops and never does. I would have expected it to start shipping but how many years has it been teased? Is there a firm launch date yet? I did see all the usual YouTubers post their PR campaign at the same time recently so it must be soon right? Right?

rconti 5y ago
I just saw my first one last week. It had manufacturer plates though. Last week was the big press launch, of production vehicles. Car and Driver is driving one across the Trans America Trail right now. I believe the first customer car rolled off the line Sept 20. First deliveries were supposed to have been in Sept. It looks like they have, in fact, started. If you try to order one now they say "January delivery" which surprised me that they could promise so soon with so many preorders.

reilly3000 5y ago

They have zero revenue because they haven’t shipped any vehicles yet which should start soon. They spent $1b to build factories and cars. Maybe I should buy when their stock opens if lots of people are missing this bit.

bink 5y ago
I'm not placing any bets on whether they'll succeed. But if they have roughly 50k pre-orders at ~$70k/each that's $3.5 billion in revenue. And while I'm sure not everyone who pre-ordered will actually make a purchase, there are still a ton of people who aren't aware Rivian exists who can fill that gap. And that's excluding Amazon's orders which they expect to make up most of their revenue.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
manquer 5y ago
So Pre-revenue and Pre-Production and yet command $80 Billion valuation into an IPO. That is all good in the VC/PE world were investors have resources to evaluate and access to a lot of confidential data when evaluating a target. For retail investors like you and me, that is a enormous risk, neither have we the average investor the time or knowledge/skill and access to critical information to meaningfully evaluate this early stage company. There is lot of steps and risk from selling to your key investor to the entire market and to scale production to hundreds of thousands of units a year this valuation seems to have already priced in at negligible/zero .

pcurve 5y ago

"However, Reuters reported in September that it could seek a valuation of nearly $80 billion, raising up to $8 billion in its IPO." $80 billion??? It would be 95th on SP500. Sigh. Toyota = 300 billion vw = 140 billion Daimler = 95 billion. GM = 77 billion BMW = 55 billion Ford = 55 billion Honda = 55 billion. Hyundai = 42 billion Whatever happen to efficient market valuation?

echelon 5y ago
> Whatever happen to efficient market valuation? GME 13 billion AMC 19 billion HOOD 35 billion DOGE 29 billion Retail and memes.
- reducesuffering 5y ago
  One of those is not like the other...
adventured 5y ago
> Whatever happen to efficient market valuation? Efficient market hypothesis is entirely fraudulent. It always will be. Fortunately, so investors can keep taking advantage of the endless market inefficiencies. EMH is the equivalent in market theory of believing the Earth is flat. A person has to be wildly irrational and detached from the ability to properly utilize basic reasoning skills in order to buy into it.
01100011 5y ago
Haven't you seen the various mental gymnastics people use to value electric car mfgs? Sprinkle some technology on an otherwise low-margin industry and suddenly people think you have the next Google or Facebook. Nevermind that the big tech companies became so profitable because they make money off easily scaled SW. No, this time it's different!
dntrkv 5y ago
That just tells you how little faith everyone has in the existing players launching a competitive, modern EV. The Model S has been on the market for almost 10 years now and there is still zero competition from the large OEMs.

oliv__ 5y ago

Wait, you can IPO without actually having shipped anything?

varelse 5y ago

When you buy anything Amazon, it comes Alexa-enabled with the best engineering fungible staffing can provide.

echelon 5y ago
> with the best engineering fungible staffing can provide This is such a fantastic dig at Amazon and strikes at exactly what's wrong with their culture. It's a machine. The engineers don't matter. Rotten from the top. I honestly don't understand why anybody would want to work there. Better salaries and jobs exist.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- novok 5y ago
  You live in Seattle and the alternative HQ position is MSFT, and you got a good non-standard offer. If Amazon & MSFT were in the bay, I'm fairly certain they would clean up their acts.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nojito 5y ago

They have $3B cash on hand or enough to survive 3 more years selling zero cars.

jdhn 5y ago

I personally believe that out of all the electric car startups that have sprung up after Tesla, Rivian and Lucid are the 2 that are most likely to put out a product and potentially have some staying power, or get bought out. It's also worth noting that Ford has invested in Rivian (first or second major round I think?) in return for some of their tech. If you're a believer in the staying power of the F-150, then this could be viewed as a win for Ford as well.

pcurve 5y ago
I think Rivian and Lucid will not be around in 10 years. Legacy makers will still dominate. EV doesn't change the fundamental nature of the car sector, which is capital intensive, low-margin, and very buying cycle. However, longer term, EV will follow the path of Android as cars become more autonomous. Things like driving dynamics, active and passive safety innovations will matter less and less. The only thing that will matter at that point is data, software, and battery technology, which Tesla dominates. I wouldn't be surprised 20 years from now, if Tesla isn't even making any cars.
- taurath 5y ago
  I don’t necessarily agree with most but it seems like Tesla becoming a battery company primarily is interesting enough to give it a look. The main reason they’d probably want to be a car company is margins - I’d bet the battery market blows up with competitors as it’s sort of doing now and it’s almost too much of a risk to be all in on just batteries, where if you’re a battery wholesaler any shift in say resource mining availability could create pressure, where if you have a decent margin product on the back of it you can “eat” those costs, and also aren’t beholden to other customers. The legacy auto industry doesn’t treat suppliers well.
atombender 5y ago
Rivian does seem like the real deal. I first noticed them when prototype versions of their SUV truck were used for the recent Apple TV+ series Long Way Up [1], where Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman ride electric motorcycles from Ushuaia to Los Angeles, with a production team following in those Rivian cars. The crew absolutely loves the Rivians, and as far as I remember, they only experience a minor hiccup. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Up

chrisgd 5y ago

“Rivian, an EV manufacturer whose investors include Amazon filed to go public. The move would offer a more liquid funding source for the company, in line with markets that are increasingly looking to invest in giant markets earlier.”

jppope 5y ago

Alternate title: "Rivian, who is aggressively investing in building their business, files for IPO" Just wondering when anyone in the media is going to figure out that it takes a f*ck load of money to build a modern auto manufacturer. Hell the incumbents aren't even willing to spend the money

manquer 5y ago
Yes it takes a lot of money to succeed in the auto biz, but that doesn't mean any companies spending a ton of money will automatically succeed. Retail investors/ Media do not have access to critical information it takes(or skill) to evaluate a early stage company like Rivian the kind a VC/PE would have. They are effectively pointing the problem of very early stage companies without revenue or production going for IPOs. Rivian is not even the first large one in the auto space doing a pre-revenue / pre-product IPO, tuSimple did one in April at $8.5 B valuation.