Rivian (RIVN) stock hits all-time low after double analyst downgrade, job cuts
After disappointing fourth-quarter results, Rivian (RIVN) stock earned a double downgrade, sending share prices to an all-time low. Sitting at its lowest value since going public, the EV maker looks to gain control of costs in 2024.
Q4 earnings miss the mark
After releasing Q4 and full-year earnings results Wednesday, Rivian announced it was laying off 10% of its salaried employees.
Rivian’s CEO RJ Scaringe explained on the company’s media call the move enables them “to maximize the amount of impact we can have as a company.” Scaringe said the company “is not immune to existing economic and geopolitical uncertainties.”
The impact of higher interest rates has rippled across the industry. Rivian’s order bank has “notably reduced” as the EV maker scales output.
Although deliveries more than doubled last year, with over 50,000 vehicles handed over, the pace slowed in Q4.
As CFO Claire McDonough explained in November, Rivian expected “a more significant gap between production and deliveries” with Amazon limiting new vehicle intake during the holidays.
Although Rivian’s net losses improved in the fourth quarter ($1.5B vs $1.7B) from 2022, the EV maker’s gross margins took a hit with lower vehicle deliveries.
| Q3 ’22 | Q4 ’22 | Q1 ’23 | Q2 ’23 | Q3 ’23 | Q4 ’23 | |
| Rivian loss per vehicle | $139,277 | $124,162 | $67,329 | $32,594 | $30,500 | $43,372 |
Rivian lost $43,372 for every vehicle it delivered in the fourth quarter. Despite improving the number all year, Rivian’s gross profit per vehicle fell from $30,648 in Q3, $32,595 in Q2, and $67,329 in Q1 2023.
Keep in mind, this is still a roughly $81,000 improvement from a year ago when Rivian was losing $124,162 for every EV handed over.
Rivian stock hits all-time low after downgrade
Rivian’s stock was already trending downward following the Q4 earnings miss, now it’s sitting at an all-time low at roughly $10 a share.
As the company announced in November, it will shut down consumer and commercial production lines for several weeks in Q2. The planned downtime is to introduce new cost savings and technology to the R1 platform.
Rivian expects the changes will “meaningfully reduce” material costs as it exits 2024. With the upgrades, Rivian believes it will achieve a “modest growth profit” in Q4 2024.
Although it’s only planned over a portion of Q2, the upgrades will “impact all four quarters of output,” as McDonough explained. As a result, Rivian expects deliveries to be 10% to 15% lower than in Q4, suggesting around 12K to 12.5K in Q1.
Rivian projects production will remain flat this year, with around 57,000 vehicles made at its Normal, Ill plant.
The EV maker’s future promises were not enough to win over analysts. Rivian stock earned a double-downgrade this week, with UBS and JP Morgan both cutting price targets.
Analyst Joseph Spak cut his price target from $24 to $8 per share. The target suggests over 23% downside from its current $10.40 price per share.
Although “we have been optimistic on RIVN’s product and brand ultimately winning out,” Spak said in a note to clients, “a rapidly changing EV backdrop causes us to reassess our demand view.”
Spak noted that Rivian’s path to profitability and cash flow could be harder to achieve. The analyst said UBS’ average annual delivery forecast for 2025 to 2027 is roughly 33% lower than before. Spak also raised concerns about achieving 2024 gross profit and EBITDA targets.
The analyst projects a big cash raise in 2025, potentially around 30% of its market cap. Meanwhile, Spak said strong demand for EVs could boost Rivian’s stock. Spak said improved cost reductions could squash the need for more capital.
JPMorgan also lowered its price target to $11, citing missed targets and disappointing new guidance.
Even Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk chimed in. Musk posted on X (Twitter), saying the “current trajectory has them bankrupt in ~6 quarters. Maybe that trajectory will change, but so far it hasn’t.”
Electrek’s Take
Although there are real concerns with Rivian’s financials and ability to generate a profit, the EV maker is executing a plan to get costs under control.
Rivian’s R1S was the best-selling EV in the US last year, priced over $70,000. The brand was the fifth best-selling EV maker in the US last year. Rivian has a good product and has already established itself as a true luxury EV maker. Now, the company needs to nail the next growth stage.
The company already has upgrades planned to cut costs with its R1 vehicles. On March 7, Rivian will introduce its more affordable R2 electric SUV, which will significantly expand its market.
Rivian will need to either cut costs further or introduce new revenue streams like services, as R2 production is not slated to begin until 2026.
McDonough said Rivian “remains confident” that cash and equivalents can fund operations through 2025.
Source: CNBC
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Tesla (TSLA) is no longer confidently stating growth in its automotive business for 2025, and it has delayed updating its guidance until the next quarter after a disappointing performance in the first three months of the year.
2024 was Tesla’s first year in a decade where its vehicle deliveries went down year-over-year.
Just a few months ago, in January, Tesla was confident in predicting that it would return to growth in 2025:
“With the advancements in vehicle autonomy and the introduction of new products, we expect the vehicle business to return to growth in 2025.”
Today, Tesla released its Q1 2025 financial results, confirming that it had its worst quarter in years to start 2025.
The automaker is now clearly not as confident about returning to growth in its automotive business this year.
Tesla updated its “outlook” section this quarter to highlight the potential impact of trade policies and now no longer discusses automotive growth in isolation. Instead, it bundled automotive and energy businesses together and said that it will “revisit its 2025 guidance” next quarter:
It is difficult to measure the impacts of shifting global trade policy on the automotive and energy supply chains, our cost structure and demand for durable goods and related services. While we are making prudent investments that will set up both our vehicle and energy businesses for growth, the rate of growth this year will depend on a variety of factors, including the rate of acceleration of our autonomy efforts, production ramp at our factories and the broader macroeconomic environment. We will revisit our 2025 guidance in our Q2 update.
Tesla’s vehicle deliveries are already down about 50,000 units so far this year compared to last year.
It will be challenging to catch up in the current macroeconomic situation.
Tesla again guided the start of production of “new affordable models” in the first half of 2025, which could help the automaker to deliver more cars.
However, as we have previously reported, these new vehicles are expected to be stripped-down Model Y and Model 3, which will cannibalize Tesla’s current sales and limit its growth to those products.
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US DC fast charging is becoming more reliable, and charging stations are getting bigger and busier, according to a new Q1 2025 report from the EV data analysts at Paren.
DC fast charging station reliability is on the rise
Paren’s latest US Reliability Index – “Can I successfully charge at this charger?” – increased from 81.2 points in Q4 2024 to 82.6 points in Q1 2025, a notable jump of 1.7%. According to Bill Ferro, CTO at Paren, “This continues a quarterly trend across the US non-Tesla fast charging infrastructure, which suggests that the ongoing efforts to replace or sunset older hardware are having a positive impact on station uptime. In addition, newer entrants into the field are bringing time-tested hardware along with enhanced driver experiences.”
Utah, Alaska, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Nevada were the top-ranked states for DC fast charging reliability in Q1 2025.
Growth slows, but charging stations are getting larger
New DC fast charging ports grew to 55,580 at the end of Q1 2025, up 3,667 from last quarter, with total stations reaching 10,839, an increase of 794. This is fewer new additions compared to the surge seen at the end of 2024, reflecting typical seasonal slowdowns due to winter weather. However, there’s a bright spot: the average number of ports per station among non-Tesla networks rose to 3.9, compared to 2.7 year-over-year. The Tesla Supercharger network now averages 13 ports per station.
Utilization rates reflect the urban-rural divide
Average utilization – that’s the minutes of a charging session as a percentage of time a station is open each day – dropped slightly from 16.6% in Q4 2024 to 16.2% in Q1 2025, following typical holiday travel patterns. But overall, charging use is climbing, especially in dense urban areas with significant rideshare and apartment communities that rely heavily on public chargers.
Early days for NACS transition
The Combined Charging System (CCS) remains dominant, with 59% of new ports, and the shift toward Tesla’s NACS (J3400) standard is still in its very early stages. Only 104 non-Tesla NACS ports were added this quarter at non-Tesla networks, so drivers of new non-Tesla vehicles need to use their adapters if they want to use Superchargers.
Fixed pricing prevails
Charging operators primarily use fixed pricing (80%), with Time of Use (TOU) pricing making up 16%. Pay-by-time options are rare, used only 4.2% of the time.
California is the only major state where TOU pricing surpasses fixed pricing, while many states, such as Oklahoma, Vermont, and Arkansas, almost exclusively utilize fixed pricing models.
As for the most expensive places to fast charge your EV? The top four metropolitan statistical areas are all in California, with average rates at $0.60 or $0.61 per kWh.
Rural and low-income areas at risk
The Trump administration’s cancellation of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program poses a significant threat to rural and low-income communities. Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, cautioned, “Our data is a harbinger of less expansion in rural and lower-income markets as CPOs will increasingly focus on urban markets, seeing high utilization, often north of 30%, versus markets with less than 5% utilization.”
‘Charging 2.0’ – a new industry phase
McDonald summed up the report by marking 2024 as a pivotal year, stating, “2024 was a year of mixed news in the US DC fast charging industry, but it will be remembered as a pivotal turn to a new era we are calling ‘Charging 2.0’. Charge-point operators and new players in the industry are increasingly focused on creating a great customer experience, improving reliability of chargers, and reaching profitability – a shift from chasing the availability of incentives, racing to get chargers in the ground, and then crossing your fingers that utilization will grow over time.”
Read more: Trump just canceled the federal NEVI EV charger program
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Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders’ letter for the first quarter (Q1) and full-year 2025 after market close today.
We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight. Refresh for the latest information.
Tesla Q1 2025 earnings expectations
As we reported in our Tesla Q1 2025 earnings preview yesterday, the Wall Street consensus for this quarter was $21.345 billion in revenue and earnings of $0.41 per share.
The expectations had been significantly downgraded over the last month, as analysts were surprised by Tesla’s announcement of much lower deliveries than expected in the first quarter.
Did Tesla meet them?`
Tesla Q1 2025 financial results
After the market closed today, Tesla released its financial results for the first quarter and confirmed that it missed expectations with earnings of $0.27 per share (non-GAAP), and it also missed revenue expectations with $19.335 billion during the last quarter.
This is a big miss for Tesla despite the company admitting to selling a lot more regulatory credits this quarter.
At $595 million in credit sales, Tesla would have lost money without it in Q1 2025:
In short, Tesla is on the verge of being a money-losing company.
We will be posting our follow-up posts here about the earnings and conference call to expand on the most important points (refresh the page to see the most recent posts):
Here’s Tesla’s Q1 2025 shareholder presentation in full:
Here’s Tesla’s conference call for the Q1 2025 results:
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