Rivian Shares Drop 90%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 25, 9:15AM EDT

Quick Read

Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN) has made almost no progress to become a player in the EV sector.
The lack of progress has undermined investor confidence.

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Rivian Shares Drop 90% — © PeopleImages / Getty Images

The early excitement about electric vehicles (EVs) sent Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN | RIVN Price Prediction) stock from the IPO offering price of $78 on November 10, 2021, to $129 on November 12. It trades near $14 today. The stock is down 90% in the past five years, as the company has made almost no progress to become a player in the EV sector.

A recent downgrade of Rivian’s shares shows some of the company’s problems. Guggenheim analyst Ronald Jewsikow cut the stock to Hold and his share price target to $16. He said the Trump cut in the EV tax credit would work against Rivian sales. However, the company’s overall problems are much deeper.

In its first quarter, Rivian posted revenue of $1.2 billion, about the same as the year before. The lack of progress undermined investor confidence. Rivian lost $541 million, compared to $1.45 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

Rivian only delivered 8,640 vehicles in the first quarter. Management said it would deliver 46,000 to 51,000 for the year.

Rivian faces several more hurdles. Its R1S SUV has a base price of $76,900. Its R1T pickup has a base price of $70,990. With even modest upgrades, the prices of these rise at least another $10,000. One of the points experts on EVs make is that the American public wants affordable ones.

The Rivian products have several competitors. Some of these are up against products that have been failures, but they still sell enough units to take demand out of the market. The primary of these are the F-150 Lightning full-sized EV pickup and the Cybertruck.

Ford has sold only 12,039 Lightnings in the first half. This, by itself, may be a sign of a lack of demand across the sector. Ford does offer 1.9% APR loans for 84 months. It is not giving these away, but they are certainly making them affordable.

Rivian Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025-2030

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.