Rivian confirms first R1S electric SUV deliveries, lost $1.2 billion last quarter

Rivian has released its first earnings report since going public and revealed a lot of interesting new information in the process, including that it started deliveries of the R1S electric SUV.

In November, Rivian went public with an IPO on the NASDAQ. In the process, the electric automaker raised an incredible $13 billion to accelerate its plans to produce electric vehicles.

At the same time, it is also giving more insights into the company as it is required to release quarterly reports.

Today, Rivian released its first earnings report for the third quarter ending September 30.

When it comes to the financials, Rivian disclosed that it generated $1 million in revenue from delivering its first few R1T electric pickup trucks, but it lost $82 million making them.

That’s to be expected early in the production of a new vehicle.

Since the quarter ended right after Rivian started deliveries, the company gave an update on the current progression and confirmed that it had delivered 652 vehicles as of December 15.

Of those vehicles, two were R1S SUVs delivered this week. Those were the first deliveries of the Rivian’s SUV, but they were to CEO RJ Scaring and CFO Claire McDonough.

Customers’ deliveries of the Rivian R1S have yet to start.

As of the end of the quarter, Rivian had $8 billion in the bank, but that was before the IPO, so it’s safe to say that the company is sitting on a ton of cash right now.

But Rivian is also burning through it fast with a net loss of $1.2 billion this quarter:

Now the goal is to ramp up production in order to achieve a positive gross margin before it burns too much cash.

The production is not going as good as the company predicted, with now Rivian guiding a miss of “a few hundred” vehicles off of its 1,200 expected vehicles produced in 2021.

On the demand front, things are going well.

Rivian disclosed that it went from 48,000 reservations at the end of September to 71,000 reservations as of December 15:

“As of the end of our third quarter (September 30, 2021), we had approximately 48K R1 preorders from customers across the United States and Canada. Since then, we have seen accelerated growth in the daily number of preorders due to media attention and the positive experience consumers and the media have had with our R1 vehicles. As of December 15, 2021, we had approximately 71K R1 preorders.”

That might not sound like much compared to Ford’s 200,000 reservations for the F150 Lightning and Tesla’s more than 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck, but those are apples and oranges.

Rivian requires a much higher deposit, which shows a bigger commitment to an order, and it’s actually delivering the vehicles right now.

The company is also making progress on the service front, which is crucial to expanding deliveries:

“By the end of December, we plan to have over 60 mobile service vans in service and 8 service centers, which will be fully equipped to meet the majority of the service needs of our consumer and commercial customers. These service centers include locations in California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Utah, and Washington. We also recently launched our Service Support Center, which offers customers peace of mind through 24/7 emergency roadside assistance, towing, support, and remote diagnostics.”

Here’s Rivian’s full shareholders letter with more details:

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