I’ve seen them running around town (built just outside of town). They are ugly as sin, so I won’t be investing them! Really small bed as well.

Looks like they have 979M shares outstanding. That kills it for me.

quote:

I’ve seen them running around town (built just outside of town). They are ugly as sin, so I won’t be investing them! Really small bed as well.

^^^^^^^^^^
They look like Edsel trucks.

IPO shares are, generally, forced by the underwriter to be underpriced. That is because they have the power in the relationship with the company (generally) and they want the shares underpriced (meaning the company gets less for them) so they will 'pop' higher on the first day. If you can convince/force a company to sell shares reasonably worth $10 for $7, you have built in a $3 pop when the shares first trade in the market.

That means if you can get them at the IPO price (which, generally, you can't) there is a built-in buffer if the underwriters do what they always try for.

Now, why can't you generally get them?

Because, everyone in the finance industry knows this. And, so the underwriters themselves want to keep some. The rest, they parcel out to friends in the industry (so they will reciprocate on other future deals) who in turn use them as bait. They don't let just any of their firms' clients get them, no siree, these are designed as 'sure bets' to pop a decent percentage right away. You have to be either someone they need to keep happy, or someone they want to attract as a new client.

Means your trading/holding activity generates them big bucks. Which also implies this would not be your first rodeo.

TL: DR. If you have to ask, 'how can I get IPO shares?', you probably can't.

They opened today above $110, giving market cap of $107B or almost $30B more than Ford. It would have been great to get in on IPO, but as retail investors it's not likely going to happen. I've submitted applications many times before; now I don't even bother.

This enthusiasm for EV though is beginning to look quite frothy. TSLA is worth more than top ten other automobile manufacturers combined.



RIVN is interesting in that it has F and AMZN as partial stakeholders. AMZN is also they're largest client in that they're committed to providing them 100k vans over next three years.

Shares of electric-vehicle startup Rivian RIVN 29.14% Automotive Inc. jumped by more than a third in their market debut Wednesday, the latest indication of the strong investor interest in the EV market.

The stock opened at $106.75, above its initial public offering price of $78 and giving the company a market value of more than $100 billion on a fully diluted basis. That market value puts Rivain above many other auto makers, including Ford Motor Co. F -3.78% and General Motors Co.

More recently, Rivian shares were trading at $112, up 43%.

The startup, based in Irvine, Calif., has attracted investors with its big ambitions to bring electric vehicles to the mainstream, including rolling out battery-electric versions of the industry’s most popular vehicle types, namely SUVs and trucks. In addition, it has attracted backing from blue chip investors like Ford and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -2.63%

The nearly $12 billion in funds raised by the IPO will allow Rivian to increase production and speed development of future vehicle models, said founder and Chief Executive RJ Scaringe Tuesday. The company’s IPO haul was the largest for a listing on a U.S. exchange since 2014 and the seventh-largest since 1995, according to Dealogic.

“The IPO represents an opportunity to accelerate how quickly we can go,” Mr. Scaringe said, speaking from the company’s factory in Normal, Ill. “We have to go build a lot of vehicles.”
The money will aid Rivian in its efforts to establish a new manufacturing plant and secure battery supplies through partnerships and working on its own proprietary technology, Mr. Scaringe said.

As interest on Wall Street for battery-electric cars has risen, investors have funneled billions into automotive startups like Rivian, hoping to replicate the success of Tesla Inc. The electric-vehicle pioneer’s share price has gained more than 1,100% since the start of last year as it became the world’s most valuable auto maker. Last month, Tesla’s market valuation for the first time crossed $1 trillion.

With its listing, Rivian joins luxury electric-car maker Lucid Group Inc. and Chinese firms XPeng Inc. and Li Auto Inc. as largely unprofitable automotive startups that have gone public since last summer. These new challengers are commanding valuations that rival some of the more traditional auto makers that sell millions of vehicles a year.

Rivian lost $2 billion from the start of 2020 through this June and plans to deliver around 1,000 vehicles by year’s end, according to a company filing. Its more than $100 billion valuation surpasses that of backer Ford, which sold 4.2 million vehicles last year and has told investors it expects to deliver a full-year operating profit of more than $10.5 billion in 2021. Ford was valued at $80.4 billion at Tuesday’s close.

Rivian began delivering its first model, an electric pickup truck called the R1T, to customers in September. By the end of the year, it plans to launch additional models, an all-electric SUV called the R1S and a delivery truck developed in conjunction with Amazon.com, which according to company filings owns a roughly 19% stake in Rivian.

The market for electric vehicles is relatively small but growing quickly. Electric-vehicle sales accounted for 3.6% of total U.S. auto sales in October, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley.

The Biden administration is pushing to hasten the transition to electric vehicles as part of its efforts to reduce the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions. To do so, it is pushing to expand purchase incentives for electric-car buyers. Today, buyers of the first 200,000 Rivian vehicles are eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit that can help defray the upfront costs of purchasing a battery-powered model.

Mr. Scaringe said that the incentives would help accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles but weren’t crucial to his company’s future.

“It’s important for any business, not just us, to not design the business around them,” he said. “We view them as short-term in nature.”

Ford additionally has a roughly 12% stake in Rivian, having taken a position in the upstart in 2019 after beating out crosstown rival GM for the critical investment.

The $1.2 billion that Ford has invested is now worth roughly $9 billion at Rivian’s fully diluted valuation.

Other large Rivian shareholders include asset manager T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Cox Enterprises.

Rivian’s path to becoming a public company began in 2009, when Mr. Scaringe founded the company in the same year he finished a doctorate in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The company purchased a former Mitsubishi Corp. assembly plant in Normal, Ill., for around $16 million in 2017, which it has since retooled to make its first models.

Analysts have said that with Rivian planning to rapidly launch three new models, it could confront challenges scaling up its production operations. Historically, other automotive startups have struggled in the area of manufacturing quality, and launching multiple models in quick succession would even be difficult for some well-established auto makers, they say.

The company is also facing a lawsuit from a recently departed executive, who alleges she was fired in retaliation for telling a human-resources executive that she had been subjected to gender discrimination.

According to the complaint, filed last week in a California court, Rivian former Sales and Marketing Vice President Laura Schwab said she had raised concerns about Rivian’s manufacturing quality, production targets and pricing of the vehicles. The lawsuit alleges some company executives have said vehicle prices will increase following the IPO.

Mr. Scaringe declined to comment specifically on Ms. Schwab’s lawsuit.

Rivian production has been slowed this year by supply-chain issues, he said.

“You could have 99.5% of suppliers ramping at the right rate, but if 0.5% are ramping more slowly, that becomes the throttle,” Mr. Scaringe said. Internal discussions around adjusting vehicle pricing weren’t out of the norm for the industry, he said.

Competition for electric cars is heating up in the marketplace with both startups and legacy auto makers rushing to roll out new plug-in models that could directly compete with those offered by Rivian.

GM plans to revive the Hummer nameplate as an electric-pickup truck, with first deliveries beginning later this year. Ford has unveiled an electric version of its bestselling F-150 pickup set to start production in 2022.

Both companies aim to compete as well with Rivian’s commercial vehicles. Ford has already debuted an electric Transit van aimed at commercial-fleet operators. Earlier this year, GM said it would start a new business line called BrightDrop focused on making electric trucks for delivery fleets.

Mr. Scaringe said he welcomed the competition, saying that the industry would need to produce upward of a billion new electric vehicles in the next two decades as it transitions from gas-powered models to electric ones.

“It’s just staggering,” he said. “This is not a situation in which there’s going to be a single winner.”

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/e...nce-2014-11636555266