will price its initial public offering on Tuesday, seeking to raise as much as $10 billion in a listing that could give it a fully diluted valuation of more than $70 billion.
Investors will be buying into the promise of a class of EVs that mirror the gas-powered vehicles that dominate the passenger market: larger, bulkier vans and pickup trucks that are a sharp contrast to Tesla’s sleeker sedans.
Rivian delivered its first vehicles just a couple of months ago and will only produce about 1,200 units by year-end at its plant in Normal, Ill.
While demand for Rivian’s products will likely outweigh supply for a number of years, the company faces a “natural ceiling” of 300,000 to 400,000 units per year, New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu wrote in a note Monday.
With deliveries having finally started in September, Rivian is the first automaker to bring a battery-electric pickup to market in the U.S.
has more than 160,000 non-binding reservations for its F-150 Lightning, the electrified version of its best-selling pickup that starts around $40,000, though it doesn’t go on sale until next spring.
General Motors, which walked away from potentially buying a stake in Rivian in 2019, will debut an EV pickup version of its iconic Hummer this fall.
Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon has exclusive rights to Rivian’s vans for a period of four years, with right of first refusal on all vans produced for another two years after that.
A legal fight between the companies ramped up last month over Tesla’s claims that Rivian was poaching employees and, in the process, stealing “highly proprietary” battery technology.
A first-day rally in the shares, which have characterized several recent IPOs by well-known companies, could see Rivian’s valuation top that of Ford, General Motors and fellow EV maker Lucid Group Inc., which went public via a blank-check company in July and is now worth about $74 billion.
As well as ramping up hiring and increasing the volume of materials bought from its supply chain to meet demand, the company is also planning to build a second U.S.
The company had a net loss of $994 million in the first six months of 2021, compared with a $377 million deficit a year earlier, according to its filings.