The EV company has had a bad couple of weeks
Rivian, the buzzy electric vehicle company backed by Ford and Amazon, reported a net loss of $1.59 billion in the first quarter of 2021 based on $95 million in revenue. The company said it delivered 1,227 vehicles to customers during the past three months, bringing its total number of deliveries to 2,148.
Rivian said it now has over 90,000 reservations for its R1T and R1S electric vehicles, up from 83,000 as of its last update in March.
The company released its first-quarter earnings after a particularly bad week, with its stock dropping to all-time lows on the news that one of its prominent investors, Ford, was selling about 8 percent of its shares in Rivian. The company’s stock price was down over 78 percent since the start of the year.
Rivian’s stock price has been slipping since its historic IPO last year
Rivian’s stock price has been slipping since its historic IPO last year, when the company debuted on the public market at an overall valuation of over $80 billion. Since then, supply chain constraints and manufacturing woes have slowed its progress. Like other automakers, Rivian is having trouble securing the materials that are needed to manufacture lithium-ion batteries for its vehicles, in addition to the semiconductor chips needed to power many of its high-tech features.
The earnings also come as Ford has begun delivering the first F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks to customers. While Rivian has the distinction of being the first to bring its electric truck, the R1T, to market, Ford’s electrified F-series is expected to drive more customers to consider switching to EVs.
Rivian has responded by pulling back on its ambitions and maintaining a more modest schedule for the rest of the year, only producing 25,000 vehicles over the course of 2022, according to its prior earnings report. In its Q1 earnings, Rivian says it remains on track to produce that number of vehicles this year.
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