NIO x LUCID X RIVIAN: Which one is a better Buy? by C.Afonso

The EV Sector has been rising during the last years and Sales records are being broken year after year. But how many EV companies does the world support in a long-term perspective? In this report, NIO, LUCID and RIVIAN are against each other.

Nio

During last December, NIO delivered +10k vehicles for the second month in a row (130,000 Annual Sales pace). William Li, CEO of NIO, said that the ~100% Deliveries growth Year-over-year “is expected to be maintained that pace in 2022”. For this year, main catalyst are the expansion to another 4 European countires; ET7 deliveries beginning on March 28th, a new SUV model (ES7) in Q2/ Q3 and its deliveries in Q4; the start of the ET5 Model deliveries next September plus the availability of the ET7 in Germany .

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Lucid Motors

LUCID was one of 2021’s most anticipated special purpose acquisition (SPAC) stocks. Still on an early phase, the American EV delivered a few hundred vehicles in 2021. On the Q3 Presentation, the company pointed for September 2021 the start of production and for the end of October 2021 the first deliveries. For 2022, LUCID targets deliveries of around 20,000 vehicles – up by a lot versus 2021, but still a relatively small number compared to many other EVs. The company laid out an ambitious ramp-up on the IPO, estimating vehicle deliveries growing from 20,000 in 2022 to 251,000 in 2026 – with a revenue of $22.7 billion by then.

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Rivian

RIVIAN is an American electric vehicle automaker founded in 2009. It is focused on building an electric sport utility vehicle (SUV) and pickup truck on a “skateboard” platform that can support future vehicles or be adopted by other companies.

During Q3 2021, RIVIAN delivered their first
consumer vehicles, the R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV, in September and December, respectively, and completed the certification process for the sale of our Electric Delivery Van (“EDV”). We raised $13.7 billion of gross proceeds from the IPO.

Rivian is expanding the capacity of its Illinois factory from 150,000 vehicles to 200,000 vehicles a year. A second factory in Georgia, with a capacity of 400,000 units a year was announced with the production in this facility starting in 2024.

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IPO (Initial Public Offering)

NIO‘s IPO was on September 2018 at $6 rasing +$6 Billion.

LUCID‘s IPO was on July 26th 2021 at 14-16$.

RIVIAN‘s IPO was on Nov. 10 2021 at $78.00 a share, raising nearly $12 Billion.

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Market Cap

Although NIO being the one ahead of the game when it comes to Deliveries, the Chinese EV Maker is the one with the smallest Market Cap today. The company crossed the $100B barrier of valuation in early 2021 – when share price was around $60 – but since then the price have been struggling and is currently at $33.47. LUCID and RIVIAN

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Q3 Revenue

This is where the difference hits: NIO delivered 24,439 electric vehicles during Q3 while LUCID delivered no vehicles until September 30 and RIVIAN generated total revenue of $1M with the 11 trucks delivered.

Earnings/ Loss per Share

Earnings/ Loss per share is calculated as a company’s profit divided by the outstanding shares of its common stock. The resulting number serves as an indicator of a company’s profitability.

None of these companies are profitable yet, which means in this case we are seing a Loss per share scenario for the 3 companies. While NIO has $0.28 and LUCID $0.43, RIVIAN has $12.21 due to costs from starting production of its pickup truck.

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Deliveries

Unlike LUCID and RIVIAN, that are on an earlier phase of production, NIO delivered 10,628 vehicles in September alone, and has now delivered over 142,000 vehicles in total. NIO delivered 43,728 vehicles in 2020 and 91,429 in 2021, representing a 109% growth year-over-year.

LUCID delivered 500-600 vehicles in 2021 although but plans on delivering only 20,000 vehicles in 2022. The Air Model reservations increased from 9,000 in May to 13,000 in late September. The company also announced that had, by Nov. 15th, 17K reservations which means a Estimated Booking Revenue of $1.3B. Lucid is focused on ongoing production & deliveries plus the AMP-1 Phase 2 factory expansion. Lucid has 4.8B on hand, of which 4.4B was added through the de-SPAC reverse merger.

RIVIAN said in its first public Earnings Report since its initial Stock Offering that it delivered 11 pickups – a total of $1M of Revenue during Q3. The American company has about 55,000 reservations for its R1T truck and R1S SUV and has an annual production capacity of 150,000 units at its plant in Illinois. 

The company is also backed by Amazon , which owns ~20% stake in Rivian. The E-Commerce Giant has agreed to buy 100,000 electric delivery vans from them. As of Dec. 15, Rivian had produced 652 vehicles and delivered 386. The company targeted 1,200 vehicle deliveries for 2022.

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Cash on Hand

NIO revealed that Balance of cash and cash equivalents was RMB47.0 billion (US$7.3 billion) as of September 30, 2021

LUCID announced having $4.8B in cash: “In the third quarter of 2021, Lucid significantly strengthened our balance sheet through the closing of the de-SPAC reverse merger + PIPE, bringing approximately $4.4 billion onto Lucid’s balance sheet”

On their Q3 Report, RIVIAN said that: “As of September 30, 2021, we had a cash and cash equivalents balance of $5.2 billion. If the net proceeds from our IPO of $13.5 billion and net proceeds from our senior secured floating rate notes of $1.2 billion had been received on that date, our September 30, 2021 balance of cash and cash equivalents would have been $19.9 billion.”

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Stock Price

NIO (NIO)hit a new all-time-high a year ago at $66.99 and, during the last 2 weeks, it’s been recovering from the 52 Week Low of $27.52 by December 29th. Although, it didn’t broke the bearish trend yet that comes from the highest levels. The European Expansion and the new vehicles among the ramping deliveries numbers may bring a new All-Time-High these year. Check out NIO‘s Daily Chart:

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The stock is trading nearly 35% off its highs. Shares are trying to get above the 50-day line, but are having trouble getting back above that level.

LUCID is still seen as a risky stock to buy due to its early phase. In 2022, the main goal for the company it will be to prove the demand for its products and meet that demand by executing on manufacturing – among the possibility of new shares being issued in the future to raise funds, which has a positive result long-term but a negative one on a short-term for the stock price.

Last week, Citi Group analyst Itay Michaeli resumed coverage on LUCID with a Buy rating and a price target of $57.00.

The analyst enhanced “ the demonstrated leading EV tech credentials with a best-in-class blend of range, performance, charging dynamics and price; the benefits for its speed-to-market with their first vehicle, the Air, launching later this year making Lucid still “early” to the premium EV market and the advanced and comprehensive sensor suite leveraged with OTA capabilities.

Check out LUCID‘s Daily Chart:

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RIVIAN

The stock surged during the first days up to $179.47 (Nov. 16, 2021) and it has been coming back to earth these last weeks. Considering the early stage of the company, it still has much to prove before hitting that $150B Market Cap again. 2022 is time to prove the demand of its products and start to delivering them.

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Written by C. Afonso (@Afonso_investor) , January 4th 2022