It has been less than a month since electric vehicle startup Rivian has started delivering the first orders of its first vehicle, but they are ready to go public. Rivian has just started deliveries of the R1T electric bakkie and is already planning to go public in the US.
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Filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, the S-1 document doesn’t detail terms of its offering yet. This filing comes only months after the company concluded a $2.5 billion private funding round led by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Ford Motors and D1 Capital Partners.
The filed documents give us our first detailed look into the financials of the company, heavily focused on investing capital initially to get its infrastructure in place to deliver high-quality vehicles. In 2019 Rivian reported a new loss of $426 million. The losses more than doubled the following year – to more than $1 billion – as it built out its workforce, now employing more then 8,000 people, and built it manufacturing plant in Illinois, USA.
As Rivian ramps up production and starts taking orders, those losses are growing. It posted a lost of $994 million in the first half of this year alone.
The company is hoping to be profitable very soon, however. Rivian disclosed that they have nearly 50,000 pre-orders for its R1T electric bakkie and R1S electric SUV in the US and Canada alone. It hasn’t started taking pre-orders in other territories, although it planning to launch in Western Europe soon. Rivian is planning to build local manufacturing plants in each new market it expands into.
The company is also planning to establish a philanthropic foundation, called Forever, which will expand work in sustainability and delivering energy solutions. It will fund this mission with shares of its Class A common stock equal to 1% of the company’s outstanding equity immediately preceding the completion of this initial public offering.
