Rivian hits the stock market

The US electric car manufacturer Rivian is now completing its announced US IPO and placing 153 million shares on Wall Street at 78 US dollars each. Rivian is now listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol RIVN.

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Rivian is making its debut on Wall Street on its own and is not – like many other eMobility companies – merged with an exchange shell. The proceeds of the IPO amount to around 11.9 billion US dollars, but could still rise, as Rivian says it is granting its underwriters a 30-day option to buy up to 22,950,000 additional shares at the price of the IPO. This means that proceeds of up to 1.8 billion US dollars can be raised within one month.

The completion of the IPO comes at a time when Rivian has not yet delivered a vehicle under its own brand to a customer. Deliveries of the R1T e-pickup are expected to start soon, while Rivian has postponed the dates for the R1S e-SUV indefinitely for the time being. In addition to the pickups, which are in demand in the USA, the electric delivery vehicle is a priority for major customer and shareholder Amazon. A few days ago it became known that Amazon now has a stake of around 20 per cent in Rivian. The total investment of the US online retailer in the electric car start-up is now said to amount to 1.345 billion US dollars.

In view of Amazon’s large order of 100,000 electric transporters from Rivian, new details about the vehicle data have only recently become public. The delivery van specially designed for Amazon is to be built in two equipment lines and three sizes. This emerges from documents that Rivian has filed with the US authority NHTSA.

Rivian is headquartered in Irvine, California, and has a vehicle plant in Normal, Illinois, which was built by Mitsubishi and acquired by Rivian in 2017. In addition, there are already plans for a second US plant and also a European plant – here, among others, a location near Bristol was recently under discussion. Rivian has announced its European launch for early 2022. However, it is not yet clear which models will be sold here.

For a long time, Rivian was considered one of the eMobility start-ups that could really succeed in taking the step to series production. With backers like Ford and Amazon, Rivian is considered well-financed. However, the capital needed to start production and build the other plants is very high. Other backers include some well-known US investors, such as T. Rowe Price, Blackrock, Soros Fund Management and Fidelity. With the IPO, Rivian has now also provided itself with fresh capital on the stock market. Rivian does not explicitly state how the proceeds from the share issue will be used. However, it can be assumed that the above-mentioned steps – production start-up and plant construction – are to be pushed ahead.

Update 12 November 2021

After its launch on Wall Street, the US electric car manufacturer Rivian has already reached a stock market value of over 100 billion dollars on its second day of trading. Rivian is thus trading higher than General Motors or Ford, for example. The share price climbed by more than 50 per cent on Wednesday and closed at 100.73 dollars. The trend since then has been upwards. To compare; the issue price on Tuesday was 78 dollars per share.

rivian.com, reuters.com (update)