Rivian stock declines on disappointing earnings
Yahoo Finance Live's Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi discuss fourth quarter earnings for Rivian Automotive.
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JULIE HYMAN: We've got some big moves among free market movers that reported earnings here this morning. Rivian is one of them. That company coming out not just, of course, with the numbers, but really, what people have been paying attention to are the production numbers for this company. You can see there the loss was wider than estimated. Revenue was a little lower than estimated. And the company says for this year, it expects to produce 25,000 vehicle. Now-- vehicles.
Now part of the issue here for Rivian is you can't get components, right? So it could build, it says, if it could get all of those components, it could build 50,000 vehicles. So, obviously, this is a big issue for the company if, indeed, there is as much demand for Rivian trucks as there has seemed to be, Brian Sozzi.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, I'm hesitant to say this was a stinker of a quarter, Julie. I mentioned it before, but I want to put this type of quarter from Rivian in the same boat as our very critical analysis of Stitch Fix earlier in the week, which is essentially a steaming pile of dump. That's what it was. But look, Rivian here, they're dealing with trying to ramp up production of very complicated autos inside of a supply chain that is just not receptive to really jumpstarting operations at this scale.
Now I'm looking at this note here from Dan Ives. He put out two critical notes this morning, which is a little unlike Dan here. One on DocuSign, but one on Rivian saying, quote, on Rivian, "Saying the Rivian story has been disappointing to us and the Street so far would be an understatement." And he's right on. Now it's making far less vehicles than it guided to in its S-1 when they went public, and this has been a very disappointing story, burning through cash, large operating losses. It's hard to see what gets the bulls back involved with this company.
JULIE HYMAN: Well, and you also had, of course, the misstep last week where the company said it was raising prices and then had to pull back on that a little bit after backlash. You also have to wonder as a startup automaker, right, that does not have perhaps the negotiating leverage of some of its bigger competitors, is it losing out on some of these components to those competitors? Is it lower down in the stack here, in the priority stack, when it comes to component makers?
So, you know, even as, in some ways, being a startup maybe is-- puts you at an advantage in certain ways, maybe you can be more nimble, for example, when it comes to this kind of leverage. Probably not.