US electric car manufacturer Rivian overturned its forecast for the current year on Friday night. The Californians now expect a loss of 5.45 billion dollars for the full year, previously they had assumed 4.75 billion dollars. Rivian attributed the negative outlook primarily to increased production and material costs. Most recently, the company laid off around 6 percent of its employees. Rivian also reduced its targeted investments in the current year by 600 million dollars to now two billion dollars.
In the second quarter alone, the manufacturer of electric pickups and delivery vehicles burned $1.7 billion – almost three times as much as in the same quarter last year. The pressure on CEO Robert Scaringe (39) is increasing. For example, Redburn analyst Charles Coldicott told the financial news service “Bloomberg”
: “The market is now clearly less forgiving of problems that delay the time at which such companies can finance themselves.” By its own account, Rivian still has about $15.5 billion in cash reserves.
Unlike last time at luxury carmaker Lucid the numbers at Rivian were not completely bottomless. In terms of sales, the manufacturer exceeded analysts’ expectations with $364 million in the second quarter. They had previously assumed an average of $335 million. Unlike Lucid, Rivian didn’t have to concede his production goals again.
In the second quarter, the manufacturer was able to ramp up production somewhat: after 2,553 new cars in the first three months of 2022, 4,401 units rolled off the assembly line at the plant in Normal, Illinois. Rivian has planned significantly more for the second half of the year: 25,000 vehicles should be available by the end of the year. “Our main focus remains on ramping up production,” the company wrote to its investors, but alerted them directly to potential complications. “However, we believe supply chain constraints will continue to be the limiting factor.”
Time is running out for Rivian, as the manufacturer has faced each other, for example Amazon – also one of the largest investors in the company – committed to deliver a total of 100,000 electric delivery vans to the shipping giant by 2030. According to Rivian, there are also 98,000 pre-orders for the R1 pick-up model.
Ex-Bosch board member Harald Kröger is coming
Wall Street reacted cautiously to Rivian’s figures, which fell in after-hours trading share
by more than 2 percent in the meantime, but has since recovered somewhat. The company’s stock market history, which was still young, was turbulent. Shortly after the start in November 2021, the company value rose to up to 153 billion dollars, Rivian was meanwhile worth more than Volkswagen, Mercedes or bmw. A severe slump followed, and the market capitalization is now a good 35 billion dollars.
A German car veteran should also ensure more stability at Rivian in the future. In the course of the quarterly balance sheet, the company announced that Harald Kröger (55) was moving into the board of directors. Kröger was Managing Director of the Mobility division until the end of last year Bosch, before that he was a member of the automotive electronics division at the supplier. The manager had his career at Daimler started and held various management positions there for over 20 years.
In the United States Rivian will have to fend off ever greater competition in the future. The segment of electric pick-ups is still manageable, the only competitor worth mentioning for Rivian is so far ford with the F-150 Lightning. Next year also wants Tesla enter the market with its Cybertruck, which has already been postponed several times. It will take a little longer at Volkswagen. The Wolfsburg are relaunching the Scout brand, but the first electric pick-up of that make is not expected until 2026.