Rivian, the U.S. electric automaker that went public late last year, reported its fourth-quarter financial results and calendar 2021 outcome. It results in that along with its production forecast for 2022 disappointed Wall Street and sent shares to a new low.
Shares dropped 7.4% to 38.08 on the stock market today. RIVN stock tumbled 12% in after-hours trading on Thursday, signaling yet another all-time low of around 35. Rivian stock is trading well below its $78 IPO price.
“As we continue to ramp up our manufacturing facility, manage supply chain challenges, face continued inflationary pressures, and minimize price increases to customers in the near term. We expect to recognize negative gross margins throughout 2022,” the company said in a statement.
Financial Highlights
Rivian reported a little revenue in Q3, but steep losses. Sales came in around $1 million and losses were $12.21 per share. Those results are in line with what the company said it expected in a previous SEC filing.
Rivian said Thursday that it generated $54 million in Q4 2021 revenue, nearly precisely its full-year tally of $55 million. Rivian delivered 909 vehicles in the final three months of the year.
The company did move into more large-scale deliveries in Q4 2021, but it simply was not enough to bring it even close to breaking even, as anticipated. On an adjusted basis, Rivian lost $2.43 per share.
Rivian’s RS Rating is 5 out of a best-possible 99. Institutional investors hold around 35% of its stock. As of December 2021, 566 funds have a stake in RIVN stock.
Rivian will report Q4 and full-year 2021 results on March 10. Zacks Investment Research analysts expect the company to trim losses from the last quarter to $1.58 per share on sales of $50.4 million.
Rivian Price
Last week, Rivian revealed that its R1T electric pickup will cost about 17% more than previously expected. That would increase the base cost to about $78,975 from $67,500. The price of the R1S SUV will jump about 20%, bringing the new base price to about $84,000 from $70,000. All prices are before federal tax credits of $7,500.
The previous price points will apply to dual-motor versions of both the R1T and R1S, which are expected to be available starting in 2024.
The new prices originally applied to both new and existing reservations, angering customers with reservations who threatened to cancel their pre-orders.
As a result, on March 3, Rivian reversed its decision to apply the price increases to existing orders. In a note to Rivian pre-order holders, Scaringe said the company had “wrongly assumed the announced Dual-Motor and Standard battery pack would provide configurations that would deliver price points similar to your original configuration.”
Other Headlines
Rivian is also collaborating with Amazon on an electric delivery van. The e-commerce giant said it would order up to 100,000 vans through 2024, part of the effort to decarbonize its logistics fleet. Amazon recently confirmed it owns some 20 percent of Rivian after participating in multiple funding rounds before the IPO.
In the shareholder letter, Rivian said it sold its first electric delivery van to Amazon in the fourth quarter of 2021. The production ramp for the van has gone “smoother” than for the R1T truck, the company said. Scaringe confirmed that the van won’t start rolling out in greater quantities until the second quarter of 2022.
Battery chemistry and commodity prices, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, are putting a strain on EV production across the industry. Scaringe said Rivian is planning to use new battery packs in its EVs. It includes cells made from lithium iron phosphate for its standard range vehicles and high nickel chemistry for its longer-range vehicles.
“One of the nice things about having multiple different chemistries across our portfolio is it essentially provides a bit of a hedge around some of the different materials that go into different battery chemistry,” he said, “In this case, of course, referring to nickel.”
Rivian isn’t the only EV newcomer to feel growing pains. Lucid Motors slashed its production expectations to 12,000-14,000 vehicles from the original prediction of 20,000 vehicles. Still, Rivian has faced a tougher road than most, with the loss of $117 billion in market value over the last four months alone. Analysts are lowering their price targets by an average of 40 percent
What’s Next
Analysts had expected the company to target 40,000 vehicle deliveries in 2022. However, in its earnings report, Rivian instead said that it will “have sufficient parts and materials to produce 25,000 vehicles across our R1 and RCV platforms” in the year, a sharply smaller number.
That delivery number will square out to what Rivian anticipates is a $4.75 billion adjusted EBITDA loss for the year. The company is not guided to a more rigorous profit metric.
Rivian’s 2022 is shaping up to be a challenging one fraught with supply chain crunches and competition from the likes of GM and Ford. Which are launching their own EV pickup trucks and SUVs.
CEO RJ Scaringe said the company will announce next week a new chief operating officer to help scale production and manage the supply chain.
Rivian’s current fortunes have fallen significantly since its much-hyped IPO last year. At the time, it was one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history, with the stock topping out at almost $130 per share. Since then, the stock has fallen by two-thirds. At the time of this writing, one RIVN share sits at $37.70 in pre-market trading.
