Rivian has reported its first-quarter earnings, showing the company has slightly beat its earnings expectations, bucking the industry trend.
The EV startup segment has been going through the wringer this week. Fisker reported earnings earlier today, indicating that the business is suffering from weakening demand and a flimsy financial position, following a very similar report from Lucid on Monday. Now, Rivian has reported its Q1 earnings as well, showing that the company barely missed investor expectations.
According to Rivian’s Q1 earnings report, the automaker raked in $661 million in revenue, equating to a net loss of $1.349 billion. Rivian reported an earnings-per-share (EPS) loss of $1.77. According to Yahoo Finance, this contributed to slightly beating investor expectations, set at $657.7 million in total earnings, a $1.32 billion net loss, and an EPS loss of $1.58.
Rivian aims to improve its financial health dramatically over the coming two years, eventually resulting in profitability by the end of 2024. This year, the American automaker aims for a conservative loss of $4.2 billion, $1 billion less than in 2022. While this will likely prove to be a monumental task, Rivian’s CFO has made it clear that the company is dedicated to ramping production and deliveries while shrinking overhead costs.
This year alone, Rivian has laid off a substantial amount of employees and introduced product changes to reduce its production cost per unit. This is on top of opening all new production lines for new battery technology as well as the hotly anticipated dual motor “Enduro” drive units.
Luckily, Rivian has plenty of cash reserves to help it achieve its profitability target. At the end of Q4 2022, Rivian reported total cash reserves at ~$12 billion, which has now dipped to $11.78 billion. Compared to its rivals, such as Lucid and Fisker, this is more than a ten-fold in cash liquidity, which should help ease investor concerns.
This isn’t to say that Rivian’s financial condition is fantastic. Specifically, its stock price has collapsed by just over 85% since its IPO, and the price targets set by institutional investors have followed in tow. According to MarketBeat, the average price target for the Rivain stock is $28.50, far from where it sat a year ago at $83.88.
Following its earnings report, Rivian’s stock price climbed in after-hours trading. Prior to the earnings report, the stock had been rebounding from its all-time low of just under $12 last month.
Besides its enormous cash reserves, Rivian does have a couple of other positive indicators. Foremost, it is currently dramatically increasing its manufacturing footprint, with new facilities being constructed in Georgia and Kentucky. Second, with a planned production output of 50,000 units this year, it will dramatically reduce customer wait times, which is likely to stoke demand. Finally, with plenty of Amazon van orders to be fulfilled, Rivian can still count on at least one growing revenue stream.
William is a Rivian shareholder.
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