Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

assets.rivian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 173 posts

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

#61

Post by alexb_ »

cassac wrote: post #46
basch wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought that until Tesla wrecked everyone.

"wrecked"... Tesla didn't even come close to wrecking anybody. They came in as a new competitor, and are still massively overvalued because of investor delusion.

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

#62

Post by ghaff »

PaulsWallet wrote: post #23
gwbas1c wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>In the rest of the developed world, public transport extends out into rural areas.

I have spent a lot of time in Europe and, once you get away from population centers and even larger towns, public transit can get very hit or miss. OK, maybe there's technically a once or twice a day bus to that rural hamlet but lots of Europeans own cars and, while it's generally easier to get by without cars in areas of Europe, it's not like you can hop on public transportation everywhere.

It varies of course. Somewhere like Switzerland (as another poster notes) is generally easier to get off the beaten track by bus or train than a lot of coutries.

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

#63

Post by echelon »

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?

The goal is to widen the cash flow and capture as much income as possible.

Sometimes this succeeds wildly: Amazon.

Sometimes the vision fails to materialize: Uber.

Sometimes the vision was fatally flawed from the start: Carvana, MoviePass, ...

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

#64

Post by alexb_ »

mbgerring wrote: post #59
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely a smart move. The F-150 Lightning is also a very good truck, and it gets to capitalize on the F-150 brand and customer base. They addressed a gap in the market (smaller electric truck) rather than trying to go head-to-head with the biggest full-size truck brand in the industry. Smart move.

The Rivian is a full-size truck and performs as good or better than the Lightning for similar tasks.

What's the price comparison?

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

#65

Post by majormajor »

mbgerring wrote: post #59
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely a smart move. The F-150 Lightning is also a very good truck, and it gets to capitalize on the F-150 brand and customer base. They addressed a gap in the market (smaller electric truck) rather than trying to go head-to-head with the biggest full-size truck brand in the industry. Smart move.

The Rivian is a full-size truck and performs as good or better than the Lightning for similar tasks.

That bed length disadvantage is pretty significant if you're coming to it from the "truck user" market vs the "weekend camper" or "soccer mom" market.

I was interested in a Rivian until I saw one in person and saw how short that bed was. It wasn't the first spec I'd looked at on paper, but jumped out in-person. In that size I'd probably go cheap with a Maverick hybrid for now until there are more full-EV competitors.

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

#66

Post by briga »

mattlondon wrote: post #33
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…

"negative gross profit" ... that is corpspeak for "loss" right? I guess don't say "The L-word" is some attempt to paint a rosy picture? "This is not use losing money! We're making a negative profit by investing!"

Maybe they’re trying to trick the automated trading algorithms that buy and sell shares based on sentiment analysis. Negative gross profit sounds vaguely like a good thing at a glance

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

#67

Post by cj »

bdcravens wrote: post #8
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?

The ratios are different, but Uber lost over $2B last year, and overall, has lost $9B. Tesla didn't turn a profit for 8 years, until 2020, and from 2016-2018, regularly had 12 trailing months of $1B losses or more.

Worth mentioning the thing that likely motivated TSLA to be profitable is that it’s a requirement to be considered for inclusion in the S&P 500 index.

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

#68

Post by lockhouse »

hedora wrote: post #36
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.

I really like their cars, but they’re not practical replacements for a full size pickup truck (as the F-150 Lightning is). Anyway, they’re competing more with range rover and jeep than trucks, which is fine (and also a mostly-unaddressed segment).

Even the F-150 Lightning isn’t a good replacement for any pickup truck use cases that require towing or going far off the beaten path outside the reach of charging stations. There’s still no EV equivalent of just throwing a couple gas cans in the bed to extend the range.

It’s good for typical suburban pickup truck uses though and could be a good farm truck since you could just charge it at home.

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

#69

Post by RC_ITR »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #48
mattlondon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"negative gross profit" ... that is corpspeak for "loss" right? I guess don't say "The L-word" is some attempt to paint a rosy picture? "This is not use losing money! We're making a negative profit by investing!"

This is just GAAP, right? If you know what Gross Profit is - negative Gross Profit is a fine concept. Why have a separate line item & term for positive and negative?

If you look on their 10-Q/K's, Rivian refers to 'Net Loss' instead of 'Net Income.'

The line items can be changed in that way and it still qualifies for GAAP.

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

#70

Post by juice_bus »

post_break wrote: post #38
tomcam wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you translate that for me?

They sell the delivery trucks at cost, we're going to try to make that cost lower so we won't lose money on each one sold.

Is "cost" set at the original date of the agreement? Otherwise lowering cost wouldn't help. (or this is a joke I'm whiffing on...)
Post reply on HN