Rivian aims for more than $50 billion valuation in IPO

Rivian Automotive Inc., the electric truck maker backed by Amazon.com Inc. and Ford Motor Co., plans to raise as much as $8.4 billion in an initial public offering that could give it a value of as much as $53 billion.

Rivian said it plans to sell 135 million shares for $57 to $62 each, according to its filing Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. At the top of that range, Rivian would have a market value of $53 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filing. Accounting for employee stock options and restricted stock units, the company’s fully diluted value is close to $60 billion.

That compares with a valuation of $27.6 billion after a $2.65 billion funding round in January, Bloomberg News reported.

The listing would eclipse the June IPO by XPeng Inc. as the largest ever for an EV maker IPO. XPeng raised more than HK$16 billion ($2 billion) including so-called greenshoe shares in its Hong Kong IPO. Electric-vehicle leader Tesla Inc., with a current market value of $1.2 trillion, raised $260 million listing in 2010.

Rivian has attracted cornerstone investors that indicated interest for up to $5 billion of the IPO shares, its filing shows. The investors include Amazon.com Inc., T. Rowe Price, Coatue Management, Franklin Templeton, Capital Research Global Investors, D1 Capital, Third Point Investors, Blackstone Inc., Dragoneer Investment Group and Soros Funds.

Irvine, Calif.-based Rivian was seeking to be valued at about $80 billion in a listing, Bloomberg News reported in August when the company announced that it had filed confidentially for an IPO.

The company’s IPO plans come as electric vehicle makers are scaling up, angling for a bigger slice of the growing market. With $10.5 billion raised from backers including Amazon and Ford, an established factory in Illinois and thousands of reservation holders for its R1T truck and R1S sport utility vehicle, Rivian is among the most serious competitors lining up to take on Tesla.

Rivian had a net loss of $994 million in the first six months of 2021, compared with a $377 million deficit a year earlier, according to its filings.

In addition to Amazon, Rivian’s biggest investors include affiliates of T. Rowe Price, Global Oryx Co. and Manheim Investments, its filings show.

To help attract retail investors, Rivian plans to allocate a portion of its IPO shares to SoFi Securities LLC’s online brokerage platform. Founder and CEO  R.J. Scaringe is expected to maintain control over Rivian through a class of stock giving him 10 votes per share, compared with one vote each for th shares sold in the IPO.

The offering is being led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. More than 20 banks are listed on the cover page of its prospectus. Rivian plans for its shares to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol RIVN.