Since the 2026 launch of the Rivian R2 electric SUV and the surprise appearance of the 2027 Rivian R3 and R3X small off-roaders, Rivian is eager to bring more good news to the market to boost its earnings for the year. Can one of the newest all-electric car companies keep up with declining sales? This is the case.
Automotive News says that 13,588 cars have been delivered so far in Q1 2024. This is a 71% rise from the same time last year and “in line” with Rivian’s previous prediction that it would make 57,000 cars each year. Its Normal, Illinois, plant made 13,980 cars, which is 48% more than it did the year before. The market will close on May 7, though, so we will know for sure how well it did financially later. Rivian will give investors and stockholders a report on its cash flow in 2024. This will show us how the company is slowly cutting down on its (substantial) losses.
It wasn’t possible to get a sales breakdown by model for the Automotive News article. When we called Rivian to get the same information, we got the same answer. “We don’t break down the vehicle split by production numbers for the R1,” a Rivian representative said. This also means we can’t say if the R2 is the main reason for the rise in supply. Soon after the R1 came out, an email went around saying that if you bought one, you would be at the top of the waiting list for the highly anticipated all-electric car that was just released.
So, we have to trust what AN says, which comes from S&P Global Mobility registration data and says that as of this writing in 2024, 2,710 R1S and 762 R1T cars have been newly registered. These numbers show the 3,818 registrations that were made public, which is 46% more than the registration statistics from 2023. Rivian had made 57,232 cars and delivered 50,122 to customers by the end of 2023. So, why doesn’t it expect growth from that momentum? After all, Q1 was so much better than Q1 last year. Rivian wants to do that, but there isn’t much good news to back it up.
The automaker said in February that it expected the same amount of output as in 2023 and that a stoppage at its Normal, Illinois plant would not help with that. In the second quarter of 2024, this plant will introduce “new suppliers” for its cars, along with performance improvements that are meant to make production more efficient and possibly lower prices. When we asked our Rivian person about the downtime and whether it had anything to do with the R2, they gave us the same answer as AN. We’re adding new materials to the R1 line and making production more efficient. This situation will get worse because Rivian has stopped investing in and setting up a new factory in Georgia in order to fix its present financial problems.
Rivian’s stock dropped from a high of $12.78 per share on March 8 to $10.49 on April 2, the day the Automotive News story came out, which shows that Wall Street did not like the story. The stock had gained some ground and was ending the day a few pennies higher per share, but it was still not doing as well as it had been in the first week of March. But faster deliveries show how healthy the company will be in the future. In a month, it should be easier to see how its finances are doing.
COMMENTS