The excitement on the Rivian title is confirmed today. The shares of the electric vehicle startup today mark + 5% in the area of $ 129 after the very positive debut on Wednesday on the Nasdaq (the placement price was set at $ 78) which was then followed by + 22% yesterday . This is the largest IPO of 2021 on Wall Street.
At these levels Rivian is worth about $ 112 billion, fifth in the ranking by market capitalization of the automotive sector, far surpassing auto giants such as Daimler, GM, Ford, BMW and Stellantis.
The valuation reached yesterday by Rivian means that the 20% stake held by Amazon worth nearly $ 21 billion and that of 12% of Ford about 12.6 billion (figures as of yesterday’s closing). Amazon plans to use Rivian vehicles in its delivery fleet, after ordering delivery of 100,000 vehicles by 2030.
Musk has his say
The arrival on Wall Street of the new rival did not leave Elon Musk indifferent. Tesla’s number one first wished the company to increase production rates and break even cash flow, then in another tweet he pointed out that among hundreds of startups, Tesla is the only “American carmaker to have achieved a high volume production and a positive cash flow in the last hundred years “.
Rivian took over dozens of former Tesla employees, including key engineers who were involved in the Tesla Model 3 launch.
After its first two trading days in 2010, Tesla had a market capitalization of just $ 2 billion. RJ Scaringe, CEO and founder (in 2009) of Rivian, owns 17.6 million shares, worth $ 2.2 billion, based on Thursday’s closing price.
What Rivian does
Rivian Automotive, an Amazon and Ford-owned electric truck, van and SUV startup, said in its prospectus that it already has 55,400 pre-orders for its electric vehicles, R1T pickup and R1S SUV. The company expects to fulfill those orders by the end of 2023. The R2T is a pickup truck that starts at $ 67,500 and the R1S is an SUV that starts at $ 70,000. Rivian with its Illinois factory claims a production capacity of up to 150,000 vehicles per year and had over 6,000 employees at the end of June. Rivian in the prospectus indicates that will lose up to $ 1.28 billion in the third quarter of 2021, while revenue will range from zero to $ 1 million.