Rivian logo on the R1T car. New York | Reuters
Rivian, an American start-up that is evaluated as a competitor to Tesla, the No. 1 electric car industry, has been listed on the NASDAQ. On the first day of listing, Rivian’s stock price rose 30% from its IPO price.
American electric vehicle startup Rivian finished trading at $100.73 on the 10th (local time), the first day of its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, up $22.73 (29.14%) from its public offering price. Its market cap stood at $98.6 billion (about 116 trillion won). Shares of Rivian rose to $119.38 per share on the same day.
With this, Rivian surpassed the market cap of Ford, General Motors (GM), and Chrysler’s parent company Stalantis, which are America’s ‘big three’ car makers. All three companies have a market cap of less than $90 billion.
Rivian is a startup founded in 2009 by RJ Scarringe, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In recognition of its electric vehicle manufacturing technology, it received an investment of about $10.5 billion from Amazon and Ford. Amazon and Ford own 20% and 12% of Rivian, respectively. “The $12 billion raised from the IPO will increase production and accelerate the development of future vehicle models,” said Scarringe.
According to Dealogic, a financial information company, the company’s initial public offering (IPO) was the largest since 2014 and the seventh since 1995. Based on the IPO price of Rivian, the amount of capital raised is about $12 billion. “Electric cars are inevitable, and it is good for the market to see another reliable electric car maker go public,” said Craig Irwin, an analyst at Los Capital.
Rivian made an operating loss of about $2 billion until June of this year, but started to monetize it by putting the electric pickup truck R1T on the market in September, and plans to launch a sports utility vehicle (SUV) R1S next month. Rivian plans to produce at least 1 million electric vehicles annually over the next 10 years. Rivian, based in Irvine, California, builds electric vehicles at an assembly plant in Illinois.
However, Rivian stock did not rise as much as some experts had initially expected. Earlier, Reuters reported that “Institutional investors on Wall Street are betting that Rivian will be the next ‘big player’ in the electric vehicle sector dominated by Tesla.” The market value is expected to be 107 billion dollars (126.15 trillion won).
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