As Ford Authority reported yesterday, Ford-backed upstart EV automaker Rivian exceeded expectations with its IPO filing, selling a total of 153 million shares at $78 each and raising $11.9 billion in the process, giving it a fully diluted valuation of $76.4 billion – making it the sixth-largest IPO in U.S. history. However, on its very first day of trading, the company’s stock rose 29 percent, giving it a value of $86 billion and an implied valuation of $91 billion, according to CNBC.
Amazingly, that makes Rivian more valuable than a number of legacy automakers, including Ford at $77 billion and General Motors at $86 billion. The company still trails Tesla, which recently reached an astounding valuation of $1 trillion, but Rivian is also still in the very early stages of establishing itself as a presence in the fast-growing EV market.
Regardless, the company’s day-one boost also lifted Ford’s 12 percent stake in the automaker to over $10 billion, while Amazon owns a 20 percent stake worth around $17 billion. Just a couple of months ago, in September, Amazon estimated that its investment in Rivian was worth just $3.8 billion.
Prior to its IPO, Rivian had already raised $10.5 billion through multiple fundraising rounds, with financial backing from a number of other established companies. Ford has invested in the company multiple times, including an initial investment of $500 million back in 2019 and an additional $902 million in Q1 of this year.
The company recently began production of its first vehicle – the R1T – and has been investing heavily in ramping up production after receiving 55,400 pre-orders for the pickup and the R1S SUV, as well as an initial order of 100,000 delivery vans by Amazon.
Congratulations to @RJScaringe and the team at @Rivian on their IPO today. Yet another step forward. Our industry and planet will benefit from the shift to EVs.
— Jim Farley (@jimfarley98) November 10, 2021
Rivian’s IPO filings revealed that the automaker lost $994 million in the first half of 2021 – up from $377 million a year ago – which it attributed to costs associated with ramping up production. However, the company was able to record revenue over a three-month period that ended in September and expects to do so moving forward as well, though it’s unclear when it might be able to turn a profit.
We’ll have more on Rivian’s IPO very soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for more Rivian news and 24/7 Ford news coverage.
Comments
Let’s just hope that we don’t have another Nikola Scandal
How can a company, that has barely made anything, has never made money and probably will not for years, if ever, has no dealer network, has one factory with limited capacity, and owes billions of dollars ( I guess not now after the IPO, depending on what they do with that money ) be worth more then a Ford or GM? This world has gone crazy.
That’s what I meant by hoping that we don’t have another Nikola scandal
Nikola didn’t have an actual working vehicle (truck and semi) and no deliveries to date. Rivian actually has some promise. That order of 100k delivery vans from Amazon over x amount of years, along with desirable battery tech, and what I believe is a good looking truck & SUV makes them viable.
It looks like Ford’s $1,500,000,000 investment worth 12% of the company, it is now worth $12,600,000,000 now! That is a 10 fold return on investment! Lets hope the stock price stays up there!
Now Rivian should have plenty of money to invest in a battery production plant and a new factory to build the cars and vans. I am sure that demand for batteries will far exceed their supplier ability to send them to America.
The 20% that Amazon owns is now worth some $20 Billion!