Rivian Stock Collapses

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 23, 6:30AM EST

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Rivian Stock Collapses — © 2022 Rivian R1T (in Glacier White), front 6.21.22 (CC BY-SA 4.0) by Kevauto

Electric vehicle (EV) company Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN | RIVN Price Prediction) wants to be the next Tesla, or at least a smaller but financially successful version. The stock market has made a heavy bet against that. Rivian’s stock is now down 66% in the past year and still falling. As large legacy car companies like Ford struggle to sell EVs, so do the small EV start-ups. The only winner at this point is Tesla, the shares of which are higher by 56% in the past year, well ahead of the S&P 500’s jump of 22% over the same period.

EV sales growth rates are slowing. Around the world, the stories differ. EV sales fell by about a third in the United States in December. They continue to grow rapidly in China. The world’s top EV company is no longer Tesla. It is China’s BYD. (See the 15 worst-selling electric vehicles last year.)

Rivian will not report its most recent quarterly numbers until February 21. They will likely show that Rivian sells only a few thousand cars monthly.

Rivian has tried to strengthen its executive bench. Most recently, Jonas Reinke was just added to oversee Rivian’s new EV platforms, including R2 and R3. He earlier worked at Apple and Porsche.

Rivian management should be concerned about Ford’s decision to cut production of its F-150 Lightning pickup, the sales of which should be strong because the gasoline-powered version is America’s top-selling vehicle. It sold over 750,000 last year in the United States. Any driver who has owned one of the legacy F-150s and wants to change to an electric one is part of a huge universe that already owns the brand.

Rivian’s R1T is a direct Lightning rival.

Last year, Rivian produced 57,232 vehicles, ahead of industry expectations of 54,000. However, in the third quarter, it lost $1.4 billion on revenue of $1.3 billion. Wall Street believes that pace is not sustainable. Not even close.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.