Rivian (RIVN) results for the 1st quarter of 2022 – a loss of 1.5 billion dollars, 10 thousand new orders, confirmed the instructions for the production of 25 thousand

Rivian published it Results of the first quarter of 2022 and a letter to shareholders after closing today, showing $ 95 million in revenue and a loss of $ 1.593 billion for the quarter ($ 1.77 per share), compared to a loss of $ 414 million for the same quarter last year. He ended the quarter with nearly $ 17 billion in cash, mostly from him a massive IPO late last year.

Rivian also reaffirmed its annual recommendations for 2022, expecting total losses of $ 4.7 billion for the year out of 25,000 total production units and $ 2.6 billion in expected capital expenditures. While the RIVN fell 9.6% during trading today, the market reacted positively after the market closed: shares recovered 5.5% after the close of trading.

Rivian noted that these financial losses are largely due to production at small volumes on the high-volume line. The Rivian plant was built with 150,000 miles in mind, so creating fewer units would result in higher unit costs. Rivian expects this to continue in the short term, but will improve as production grows.

Our last production update from Rivian was on April 5, right after the end of the quarter when Rivian announced that 2553 cars were produced in the first quarter of this year and supplied 1227 of them. The company built 1,015 trucks in 2021, meaning that 3,568 vehicles were produced by the end of the first quarter.

In today’s letter to shareholders, Rivian updated this figure, stating that as of May 9, “~ 5,000” cars were released, which means that since the end of March, production is about 300 units per week. This means that Rivian’s workload has doubled since the beginning of the year, which shows good progress.

Rivian notes that there have been significant problems with COVID and supply chain problems that are holding back production. But despite these challenges, management confirms that by the end of the year, 25,000 units will be produced based on forecasts of the future supply environment. This will require another approximate doubling of Rivian production on average over the rest of the year to achieve these goals.

Production also increased on the Rivian EDV-700 motorhome, but Rivian did not share the figures for them. Amazon began delivering packages to Rivian vans in Denver, Colorado at the end of last month.

In March, Rivian announced a significant rise in prices on existing and future orders, partially responding to these supply chain challenges, and received a significant reaction from the holders of orders, many of which threatened to be repealed. Rivian quickly returned and restored the original prices for order holders.

Although feared it would lead to a loss of orders, Rivian said in today’s letter for the first quarter that net pre-orders increased after this price update, indicating high demand. More than 10,000 new pre-orders were made for R1 at an average price of $ 93,000. Thus, the total number of pre-orders is up to 90,000.

In the future, Rivian will change the way the order flow system works to better manage the expectations of customers who pre-order cars. Rivian will allow new customers to view options when placing an order, but will not be able to fix the configuration until build time. This will allow customers to choose from the most updated options and prices when setting up orders and will help Rivian be more agile in uncertain economic environments and deliveries.

Finally, Rivian took the opportunity to mark the completion of it agree with Georgiaby providing $ 1.5 billion in economic development incentives there to build an additional factory. With Rivian’s current spending rate and large $ 17 billion military chest, the company still believes it has enough money to fund the construction of this plant and the expected future average-priced “R2” model to be built on its own platform in Georgian. factory.

Take Electrek

Although there is no incredible news with the Golden Ball in this earnings report, confirmation of the recommendations for the whole year is very important, given what has happened in the last few months. Rivian shares have suffered from disputes over rising prices, a general downturn in the stock market, supply chain difficulties and Ford’s attempt to sell part of its shares (along with other insiders, after the IPO), leaving investors uncertain and desperate. to hear the good news. Falling from a high of $ 180 to today’s $ 20 stock price scares everyone.

So, “don’t worry, everything will go according to plan” in such an environment is helpful. This, at least for today, has stopped the bleeding, as investors seem to have been relieved to hear that the sky may not be falling as hard as they feared.

Rivian’s $ 17 billion in cash and expected costs for the future plant are also a significant comfort for startup investors indefinitely. That’s a lot of money and they were raised at the right time and they have to help Rivian survive the problems of the stock market downturn. At current rates, Rivian burns are about 10-quarters before the runway ends, which is longer than other EV startups have at current burn rates.

Finally, the net growth in orders was not surprising to us at Electrek, given that automakers and the public constantly underestimating the demand for EV. Right now people want any EV that they can get their hands on – and even EVs that they can’t get their hands on. So one thing Rivian most likely won’t have to worry about is selling every truck he can build over the next few years. We wouldn’t even worry other electric competitions coming on stage – if there is a lot of space for several adventure trucks running on gas, then, of course, space for adventure trucks EV will be more than enough, especially given the many benefits of electric drive.

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