Rivian is holding on tight to its goal of delivering 25,000 electric vehicle by year’s end, but to get there it now anticipates to burn an extra $700 million.
The automaker tucked the revised guidance on losses within its second quarter earnings report, telling investors that it expects to lose a whopping $5.45 billion in 2022, up from the $4.75 billion estimate it shared three months earlier. Rivian blamed the hike on several factors, including “supply chain challenges” and “raw material inflation.”
In Q2, Rivian lost $1.71 billion and delivered 4,467 vehicles. Those deliveries include the automaker’s SUV and truck as well as the delivery vans it builds for Amazon. Altogether, Rivian delivered 5,694 vehicles during the first half of the year.
Still, Rivian cruised past analysts’ second-quarter expectations on revenue, bringing in $364 million in the quarter (or about $26 million more than analysts anticipated, per Yahoo Finance). Demand for the EV firm’s SUVs and trucks also kept climbing; its backlog of preorders hit 98,000 at the end of June, Rivian told investors.
The company also announced the addition of former Bosch and Daimler exec Harald Kroeger to its board.
Over the past several months, Rivian has created some comfortable distance from its 52-week low of $19.25 per share. That slump came in May, when Ford dumped millions of Rivian shares. The young-ish EV maker ended regular trading today at $38.95 per share, or up 4%.
Last month, Rivian started laying off about 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan prompted by a changing and challenging economic environment, where inflation reached record highs, interest rates rose and commodity prices continued its upwards climb.
The manufacturing operations team working at its Normal, Illinois plant were not be impacted by layoffs.