Rivian, the investment

[Mitchel674]

Are they in the public's hands or employees for now?

I believe only a handful of employees have taken delivery at this point.

[Mitchel674]

It's kind of funny that a 15% increase in IPO price is what has you hesitant. No price changes the fact they haven't delivered any vehicles.

It's just that this pricing is so arbitrary. Pretty much just making up numbers since you cannot really value a company that has only potential future revenue. I'm more annoyed than anything that the price went up without much explanation over the weekend.

[CordMcNally]

It's just that this pricing is so arbitrary. Pretty much just making up numbers since you cannot really value a company that has only potential future revenue. I'm more annoyed than anything that the price went up without much explanation over the weekend.

Welcome to the world of EV (and other things) stocks.

[Zaphod]

Ford owns 12% of rivian if the valuation scares you, and lightning due next year.

Disclosure, yes I am talking my book.

[RDB]

Also an early pre-order for the R1S. Was going to invest as play money, now I am going to pass. No real reason other than I am annoyed at how terrible their communication is and feel like they are having some major issues behind the scenes. They have the best excuse on the planet to not be delivering vehicles, yet they choose to stay quiet and silently miss self-imposed delivery dates. I’m sure they are staying quiet because of the IPO, but it just feels shady lately. This is coming from someone who really likes the product and vision, will still buy the vehicle, and hopes they are wildly successful.

[Tim]

Ford owns 12% of rivian if the valuation scares you, and lightning due next year.

Disclosure, yes I am talking my book.

Ford invested $820m and cancelled their agreement for Rivian to make Lincoln ev’s and resigned their seat on the BoD.
Amazon ($1.3b) is the bigger player. Both stand to make big bucks on their seed capital investments. Not unusual to provide capital to suppliers. It is a type of vertical integration, kind of outsourcing R&D/production. Amazon is a fleet buyer with purchase commitments. A big plus.
However, raising $10b and losing a billion in this qtr is a large cash burn. Jury is still out.
Rivian is not involved with F150 Lightening. Made at Fords Dearborn plant (just in case of misinterpretation).

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/rivian-prices-ipo-at-78-a-share-valuing-company-at-66point5-billion.html

Priced at $78. A lot will depend on the underwriters exercise of options.
Still an IPO play.
Pre IPO, Amazon and Ford own 36.8% of the class A stock. Shrewd investments by Amazon and Ford. It is more than smoke and mirrors. However, delivering vehicles still has to be executed. Have not looked at any proformas, valuation is based on hype and timing. Speculation but well connected.

[Nysoz]

CNBC saying that even though it's priced at $78, it might open at $120

[Mitchel674]

$115 right now. I bought the 175 shares allotted to me at $78. I will be amazed if this closes over $100 tomorrow.

[CordMcNally]

$115 right now. I bought the 175 shares allotted to me at $78. I will be amazed if this closes over $100 tomorrow.

I see you got over your mixed feelings of arbitrary valuations based on minimal, if any, revenue.

[Mitchel674]

I see you got over your mixed feelings of arbitrary valuations based on minimal, if any, revenue.

Yes. It's not enough shares to really make a difference to my overall portfolio. Speculation money.

[Random1]

Rivian delivered 150 trucks so far, making it 693 million per truck plus or minus a few hundred thousand.

[Nysoz]

If anyone has the ability to buy these overhyped names at the IPO price it's worth a gamble. Just with the nature of the market and IPOs, there's a better than fair chance any popular name will end up being higher than retail IPO price.

[Otolith]

Impressive to see this IPO go up, valuation is crazy.... waiting for the fall...

Couple thoughts
1. Whats going to happen when Ford says it can't deliver on most orders of lightning for 2-3 years
2. Rivian had ~50k open reservations at IPO (maybe more now), if it could pull off delivery by end of 2022 it would put it as the top truck EV manufacturer
3. Thing is essentially an electric tacoma with more luxury interior
4. Clearly EV market is pricing/factoring in 10 year speculation

My friend who test drove one said its a game changer...

[Nysoz]

All the new EVs will be great products. The problem is scaling the business. There's a reason why Tesla (and Ford) is the only American auto company that's made it to mass production in the past 100 years or something and also almost went bankrupt during the model 3 ramp.

There's rumors that Lucid is having problems ramping their production lines. Elon has said, prototypes are easy, mass production is hard. It's also strange that there's a lack of Lucid/Rivian product reviews from actual customers and not influencers.

These companies obviously are richly valued and theoretically should go down. The problem is that they have big money backing them, Amazon, Saudi Arabia. So the market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent. That said, once options open up, I'll probably sell decently dated otm call credit spreads and buy put debit spreads thinking it'll go down at some point in the future.

[Hatton]

Caution. This speculation about IPOs is very reminiscent of 1999 and the dot.com crash.