Rivian, an electric vehicle company promising to bring us an all-electric truck, just released its first initial public offering paperwork, and it’s pretty stark: The company lost $1 billion during the first half of this year, Automotive News reports.
Here’s a little more from the article:
The Irvine, Calif.-based startup in a filing Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission listed the size of the offering as $100 million, a placeholder that will change when terms of the share sale are set.
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The company’s IPO plans come as EV makers are scaling up, angling for a bigger slice of the growing market. With $10.5 billion raised from backers including Amazon and Ford Motor Co., an established factory in Illinois and thousands of reservation holders for its R1T truck and R1S SUV, Rivian is among the most serious competitors lining up to take on electric-vehicle leader Tesla Inc.
As you can imagine, that pact with Amazon that injected cash into Rivian in exchange for Amazon nabbing exclusive rights to Rivian’s delivery vehicles for four years has actually done a lot to keep Rivian’s head above water.
There’s a clause in that pact, though, that means Amazon still gets some flexibility. It can continue to partner with other electric car companies should it see fit to do so.
As part of its IPO filing, Rivian also had to disclose its pre-orders. Right now, there have been 48,390 $1,000 deposits to buy either the R1T or R1S model.
All that said, Rivian’s filed losses of $994 million in the first half of 2021 is coming close to the $1.02 billion Rivian lost in all of 2020. As of June 30 of this year, the company had about $3.7 billion in cash to fund its growth, so Rivian isn’t in massive debt quite yet. But until Rivian actually starts selling vehicles, we’re going to continue seeing these massive losses.
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