Rivian has announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2022, posting a $1.6 billion net loss on $95 million in revenue—below Wall Street's forecast of $131 million.
The quarterly loss is much higher than the Q1 2021 loss of $414 million, though that was before the EV startup launched production at its plant in Normal, Illinois.
In the shareholder letter, Rivian notes that it had $17 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, 2022, down from $18.4 billion at the end of 2021. According to the company, the funds are sufficient to allow it to start producing its next-generation R2 series of vehicles. The mid-price EV will be assembled at Rivian's new plant that to be built near Atlanta, Georgia.
Earlier this month, the EV maker announced it would get $1.5 billion in state and local incentives to build a second $5 billion factory in Georgia, which is expected to start production in 2024.
Gallery: Rivian Manufacturing Plant In Normal, IL
Rivian said it maintains its annual production forecast of 25,000 units despite ongoing supply chain disruptions and high material costs. However, that’s half the original forecast of 50,000, which was cut in March amid the chip crisis that prevented Rivian from building as many R1T pickups, R1S SUVs and electric delivery vans for Amazon as it had planned.
Rivian said it build 2,553 vehicles and delivered 1,227 vehicles in the first quarter, compared to 909 deliveries in the previous quarter. The growth was smaller than anticipated, with the company blaming supplier constraints for lost production.
Supply chain continues to be the bottleneck of our production. This challenge has continued across a small handful of technical components such as semiconductors, as well as a few non-semiconductor components. Since March 31, 2022, we have been forced to stop production for longer periods than anticipated, resulting in approximately a quarter of the planned production time being lost due to supplier constraints.
Rivian shareholder letter
As of May 9, 2022, the company says it has built 5,000 vehicles since the start of production in Normal, Illinois in September 2021. Rivian also claims it has more than 90,000 reservations for the R1S SUV and R1T pickup truck from the United States and Canada.
