Rivian Earnings Don’t Mask Stock Collapse

Quick Read

• RIVN beat earnings expectations with revenue up 38% to $2.16B, but still lost $913M and its stock remains down 42% this year.

• Rivian refused to break out R2 delivery numbers separately, raising transparency concerns while its pricier R1T and R1S models are presumed to be selling poorly.

• The US EV market shrank 30% in the first three quarters of the year, with EVs representing only 6% of new car sales, while TSLA holds over 50% market share.

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Rivian ( NASDAQ: RIVN ) posted better-than-expected earnings. Its R2 SUV has shown sales promise. Neither masks the fact that the EV company's stock is down 42% this year, although it will get a small piece of that share back because of its modest quarterly success. And, despite an improvement at the bottom line, Rivian lost $913 million.

Rivian was proud of its revenue performance. It rose 38% to $2.16 billion. And, indeed, the bottom line improved. It lost $1.17 billion in the same period last year.

What may concern investors most is that Rivian did not change its top-line delivery guidance. Before earnings, the range was 65,000 to 70,000. In the earnings announcement, it raised the range to 67,000 to 70,000. And, despite comments about R2 sales, the disclosure was less specific. "We had record deliveries, with R2 delivering much of the gain quarter-over-quarter." Rivian did not break out the R2 numbers from total deliveries, and it could have.

Presumably, its sales of the expensive R1T and R1S continue to be poor.

Rivian remains one of the two US EV companies with a grim future. The other is Lucid ( NASDAQ: LCID ).

Rivian's unit deliveries would need to go well into the hundreds of thousands for it to make money, and it is swimming against a strong tide.

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Legacy car companies driven out of the market by losses are beginning to return at a modest pace. Evidence points to this across many fossil-fuel power manufacturers. Notably, Ford ( NYSE: F ) will launch its Fathom next year, and says sales should hit 100,000 in the first year on the market. While they do not sell well, companies from Toyota to Audi have limtied model lines.