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Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

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Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#21

Post by alexb_ »

itsmemattchung wrote: post #3

How does this company — or any company, for that matter — continue operating in the long term with that much significant (i.e. 1B) gross loss?

In the land of cheap debt and endless promises, you can continue running a completely irrational business for a very long time. Just look at Uber, who has never turned a profit.

It gets especially bad when you are a new electric car company presenting yourself as a tech company so that you can get tech-company like speculators throwing money at things that make no logical sense whatsoever.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#22

Post by giobox »

mbgerring wrote: post #9

The financials may not look good right now, but the vehicles are extremely good. They’re already way out in front of the EV truck segment, and the big automakers have a huge gap to make up to reach the same level of quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if they manage to turn this around and become profitable.

In isolation, sure, but this space is going to get so fiercely competitive so quickly (on the order of years, but that is fast for the car industry!) and ASPs for electric trucks will come down. Rivian are still generally only selling ~six-figure trucks today (the priciest configs ship sooner of course) and not making money at it.

How good the vehicle is becomes irrelevant if you can't make it at a price people want to pay. I still think Rivian can get there, but there is so far to go. They only delivered ~20k cars in 2022.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#23

Post by PaulsWallet »

gwbas1c wrote: post #6
sinistersnare wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Public transportation is a luxury. It assumes that you can live in a dense area and that your travel needs coincide with bus/train routes. It's very practical for many, and very impractical for many too.

I ride the bus and I can promise you I don't do it because of luxury. Even if that was true, it would only be true in North America. In the rest of the developed world, public transport extends out into rural areas.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#26

Post by bonzini »

alexb_ wrote: post #21
itsmemattchung wrote: post #3

How does this company — or any company, for that matter — continue operating in the long term with that much significant (i.e. 1B) gross loss?

In the land of cheap debt and endless promises, you can continue running a completely irrational business for a very long time. Just look at Uber, who has never turned a profit. It gets especially bad when you are a new electric car company presenting yourself as a tech company so that you can get tech-company like speculators throwing money at things that make no logical sense whatsoever.

Twitter did turn a profit in 2018 and 2019.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#28

Post by tomcam »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #4

“We make the Amazon delivery vehicles that Amazon gets at cost so we are a cost center that manages to offset our expenses by $600M further optimizing the weighted cost per delivery vehicle for Amazon.”

Can you translate that for me?

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#29

Post by basch »

mbgerring wrote: post #9

The financials may not look good right now, but the vehicles are extremely good. They’re already way out in front of the EV truck segment, and the big automakers have a huge gap to make up to reach the same level of quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if they manage to turn this around and become profitable.

You hear this all the time. There is no such thing as a huge lead in automaking. It’s an incredibly clonable product, and each company has huge teams taking apart each others products.

It’s also not really the product that matters. It’s service centers, parts, repairs, manufacturing capacity. The traditional companies have entrenched supply chains to get parts, and cars, across the country and into hands. All the new companies have to build that from scratch. Producing a couple of something great is an achievement, it is not a lead.

It is much much easier to catch up on the product side than it is to innovate. And because the actual product is only a portion of total value, the companies that are “way ahead” with the most futuristic cars are really the ones playing catch up.

Re: Rivian announces 1B gross loss and 600M revenue [pdf]

#30

Post by uptownfunk »

mushufasa wrote: post #5

"We generated negative gross profit of $(1,000) million for the fourth quarter 2022. For fiscal year 2022, we generated negative gross profit of $(3,123) million. Gross profit for the fourth quarter 2022 was impacted by a lower of cost or net realizable value (“LCNRV”) of inventory charge and losses on firm purchase commitments of $920 million as of December 31, 2022 compared to $95 million as of December 31, 2021. W…

Are these at all related to supply chain or inflation issues?
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