Rivian Keeps Sinking

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Oct 28, 6:46AM EDT · Published Oct 27, 10:08AM EDT

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Rivian Keeps Sinking — © Rivian R1S at Hillsdale Shopping Center (CC BY-SA 3.0) by Mliu92

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Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN | RIVN Price Prediction) has received two pieces of bad news that raise the question of whether it can survive as an independent company.
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So far this year, Rivian Automotive Inc.’s (NASDAQ: RIVN) shares have been down 55%, primarily due to a July sell-off. Lucid Group Inc. (NASDAQ: LCID), another tiny electric vehicle (EV) company carefully followed by EV investors, is down 40%. After a strong quarter, the shares of industry leader Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) have been up 8% year to date. The S&P 500 is up 23% for the year.

Rivian has received two pieces of bad news, which raises the question of whether it can survive as an independent company. One concerns unit sales, and the other concerns analyst forecasts.

Rivian throttled back on its expected production for the year because of supplier problems. Its new forecast is to produce 47,000 to 49,000 units this year. Its earlier forecast for the year was a much higher 57,000. And in the third quarter, it produced only 13,157 vehicles and delivered 10,018.

There might be a third problem, but it is too early to tell. Volkswagen has introduced a vehicle car experts say will compete with the Rivian R1S. It is called the Scout Traveler.

Rivian trades at $10.45. The census price target among the 29 analysts that follow it is $16.61. However, they expect the EV company’s revenue to be only a little over $1 billion and earnings to be a loss of $91 per share. At those levels, Rivian is working toward oblivion based on these numbers.

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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.