Rivian's Q1 earnings come short, production outlook reaffirmed; stock down

Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ:) saw its shares slide more than 5% in premarket trading Wednesday after the electric vehicle (EV) maker reported worse-than-expected earnings for the fiscal Q1 2024.

To be specific, Rivian posted a first-quarter adjusted loss per share of $1.24, wider than the expected loss per share of $1.15. However, the company’s quarterly revenue reached $1.2 billion, exceeding the consensus estimate of $1.15 billion.

The automaker reported an adjusted EBITDA of -$798 million for the quarter, better than the consensus estimate of -$824 million.

Rivian said it produced 13,980 vehicles and delivered 13,588 in Q1.

“First-quarter results exceeded our outlook and set a strong foundation for the remainder of the year as we focus on continued demand generation, delivering cost and plant efficiency improvements, advancing R2 development, and driving towards profitability,” RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s Founder and CEO said.

“We hit several milestones this quarter, including producing our 100,000th vehicle in Normal, successfully navigating the retooling upgrade, and unveiling our new midsize platform which underpins the R2, R3, and R3X.”

Looking ahead, the company reaffirmed its production target for the 2024 calendar year at 57,000 vehicles and maintained its adjusted EBITDA guidance at -$2.7 billion.

It also revised its capital expenditure guidance downward to $1.2 billion from the previous $1.75 billion, due to reduced spending related to the R2 platform.

The carmaker anticipates low single-digit growth in deliveries for both the R1 and EDV platforms compared to 2023 and expects operating expenses to decrease for the full year compared to last year.

Meanwhile, production for the R2 model is expected to start in the first half of 2026 at its Normal, Illinois, facility.

“We believe company commentary on the recent positive demand response that Rivian has seen, as evidenced by the 91% qoq increase in demo drives, will be viewed relatively well by investors especially given the weaker market for EVs more generally,” analysts at Goldman Sachs commented.

“The extent that this can be sustained without meaningful price reductions, and allow Rivian to meet its low single-digit delivery growth outlook for the year, will likely be one key debate going forward,” they added.

Rivian said it is confident in meaningful gross profit improvement in the second half of the year and reaffirmed expectations to achieve positive gross profit in Q4, “which we believe would be a key plus for the shares,” analysts at Stifel commented.

“The company continues to make progress optimizing operating expenses and anticipates 2H24 operating expresses to be substantially lower than 1H24, enabling RIVN to start 2025 with a more efficient baseline cost structure,” they added, though they believe the latest print and outlook will be neutral for the stock.