This blog post is also available in:
Flickr: Android TV app as well as the new trailer for Poshmark, I’ve been watching this daily since I was on the fence about investing in the company. The video comes with a note of caution from the actor Ben Kingsley who serves as the CTO for the company.
There are things to watch out for in today’s IPO. There is really no one other than Rivian itself that is watching this. That is how big a demand there has been for the company that is priced at its IPO range of $23 to $25 a share. On the other hand the demand doesn’t lie in the fact that Rivian owns the intellectual property for the electric car Rivian plans to release in 2020. The demand is in the fact that Rivian spent $72 million dollars to design its electric car and now that Rivian says that it plans to raise $927 million to fund manufacturing, you can rest assured that Rivian will become a major player in the electric car business.
The next question is whether or not Rivian will be able to balance production with the ability to get the new technology to market? Powertrain engineering is time consuming and expensive and when it comes to electric motors, the ability to program them in assembly line terms is equally as challenging and difficult. The temptation for an ambitious car maker like Rivian is for it to be able to build its new electric cars quickly in order to get it into markets quickly. But first order of business will be production and how quickly it can prove it can build and sell quality electric cars.
Rivian has spent a lot of time and energy developing its new EV and even with the additional investments and the added IPO financing that the company was able to report, Rivian remains firmly under the valuation established before it had to issue more equity to refinance.
So the company is going public with a valuation that is $17.7 billion. Let’s see if there is sufficient support to give the company the price it is aiming for. If investors don’t like what they see and they pay too much, the company has plenty of time to go back to the drawing board and come up with something that meets investor expectations. If investors are willing to pay up, Rivian will hit the ground running with its new product and establish itself as the first serious contender in the EV category.
This is what you should watch today for:
– This is the largest IPO of any tech company since Microsoft in 1986
– This could be the first Asian IPO since Alibaba’s $25 billion dollar deal in 2014
– This is the fifth largest IPO since the beginning of the year
This blog post is also available in:
Mashable: Rivian IPO update
New York Times: Rivian plucky electric-car start-up goes public
Washington Post: Rivian electric car company gives market shakeup
Politico: Rivian Electric Car begins trading on NYSE
Fox News: Rivian Electric Car debuts on New York Stock Exchange
Gizmodo: Rivian Electric Car is going public today