As an early investor in EV automaker Rivian, Ford held a sizable stake in the company when it went public last year. However, the automaker began selling off some of those shares last May – millions of them, in fact – though it wound up missing out on maximizing its profit in that regard once the stock price began to nose dive following one of the largest IPOs in American history. Regardless, Ford wound up making money on its Rivian investment and still held a significant stake in the company even after that selloff, though CNBC is reporting that The Blue Oval sold off the vast majority of its shares by the end of 2022.
Ford’s annual report – submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday – notes that the automaker sold a grand total of 91 million Rivian shares last year, raking in $3 billion in total proceeds – a pretty nice return on its initial $1.2 billion dollar investment. By the conclusion of 2022, FoMoCo still held 11 million shares, but that’s significantly less than the 101.9 million it held onto prior to the big selloff, when it had a 12 percent stake in the company.
Interestingly, Ford is still one of Rivian’s largest shareholders, though it hasn’t disclosed what it plans to do with the remaining 11 million shares that it currently possesses. The Blue Oval initially invested in Rivian back in 2019, at which time it planned on utilizing the upstart automaker’s Skateboard platform to underpin one of its own future EV models, though those plans were later nixed.
In the months since, Rivian just barely missed its goal of producing 25,000 vehicles in 2022 as it struggles to ramp up production at its Normal, Illinois plant among various supply chain issues. That problems have also led to a major decline in its stock price, which peaked at $180 in November 2021 and has since fallen to around $20 per share.
We’ll have more on Rivian shares soon very soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for more Rivian news and ongoing Ford news coverage.
Comments
Ford really missed the boat on divesting Rivian at its peak.
Once it realized it didn’t need Rivian as an EV insurance policy it should have been actively divesting.
Rivian was unknown to me until after I ordered a Maverick XLT Hybrid. I still have seen more Maverick pickups on the road than Rivian. No marketing at all in the greater San Francisco bay area, that is in California.