The comparatively young e-car manufacturer is an important competitor of the Californian e-car pioneer Tesla.
(Photo: Reuters)
San Francisco After a report on a cooperation between Amazon and the European car manufacturer Stellantis, the share of the electric truck manufacturer Rivian is coming under pressure. On Thursday the course temporarily fell by 17 percent when it was announced that the partnership includes a supply contract for several thousand transport vehicles per year. During the course of the day, Rivian partially made up the price loss, but was still more than seven percent in the red at noon (local time).
Both Amazon and Rivian emphasized to Bloomberg that the cooperation with Stellantis will have no impact on the agreement between the mail order company and the Californian electric car manufacturer. According to this, Rivian will deliver a total of 100,000 delivery vehicles to Amazon in the coming years, 10,000 of which are to be delivered this year.
For Rivian, the latest price slide is only a continuation of the downward trend that has been evident since the IPO in November. On the IPO, Rivian raised around $ 12 billion at a price of $ 78 per share. Within a few hours, the market value multiplied until Rivian, with a market capitalization of more than 100 billion US dollars, was at times worth more than the US automaker Ford and General Motors combined.
To date, Rivian has only brought a low four-digit number of vehicles onto the market. Unlike Tesla, Rivian focuses primarily on more powerfully motorized e-vehicles such as pick-up trucks and trucks. As a customer, Amazon plays a key role in this. Because Rivian has signed an exclusive contract with the mail order company that forbids the carmaker to deliver its trucks to other customers for four years.
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Conversely, however, the exclusivity does not apply, as the deal with Stellantis shows. The two partners don’t just want to supply each other with vehicles and cloud services. Amazon also wants to help the automaker develop infotainment software for its vehicles, for example in the area of speech recognition.
Agreement in favor of Amazon
The cooperation between the e-commerce giant and Stellantis shows “how vulnerable Rivian is to emerging competition,” said Bloomberg analyst Kevin Tynan. It is a problem that Rivian committed to Amazon very early on with an agreement that was “clearly designed in favor of the online retailer”.
At a price of $ 84.54, the Rivian share was as cheap on Thursday afternoon as it was on the day of the first issue. Compared to the high of 172.01 US dollars, the paper is almost 36 percent in the red. Nevertheless, analysts see price potential. According to data from Marketbeat, nine out of 13 analysts recently recommend the Rivian share as a buy, with an average target price of 134.64 US dollars.
One reason for this is probably that Rivian has recently been able to report a significant increase in orders in the private customer segment, which is also important. Between October and December, the pre-orders here rose from 55,400 to 71,000 pieces. A few weeks ago, Rivian also announced that it would build another production facility in the USA in order to be able to meet the growing demand in the long term.
More: Stellantis cooperates with Amazon on auto software