Baird said Rivian‘s third-quarter deliveries are “a strong sign for early demand” for the R2, reiterating an Outperform rating and a $23 price target on the EV maker.
The company founded and led by RJ Scaringe delivered a record 19,248 vehicles in the third quarter, up 57.8% from 12,194 in the second and 45.8% from a year earlier.
“No change in outlook,” Analyst Ben Kallo wrote in a note first obtained by Price Target and published on Monday.
Rivian’s deliveries “beat our/Street estimates and grew ~58% sequentially as R2 deliveries ramp,” Kallo wrote. “This is a strong sign for early demand, and we expect R2 trends will be a focal point of the quarterly update.”
The target is 61% above Rivian’s closing price of $14.30 on Friday.
A Beat That Did Not Lift the Stock
The quarter was the first to include three full months of the R2, which began customer deliveries on June 9. Rivian does not break deliveries down by model.
The shares fell 3.1% on Friday despite the result and touched $13.96 during the session, their lowest since May.
Rivian reaffirmed its full-year guidance of 65,000 to 70,000 deliveries.
With 41,807 delivered through September, that implies 23,200 to 28,200 in the fourth quarter, which would be another record.
What the R2 Trackers Show
Rivian does not publish R2 orders or deliveries, so the clearest outside signals come from owner trackers and registration data.
The highest R2 vehicle identification number reported on Rivian Roamer, an owner tracking site, was in the 13,700s on Monday.
It was in the 13,000s on September 29, the 12,100s on September 20 and the 8,300s on August 24.
An assigned number does not mean a vehicle has been built or delivered.
Among 1,789 R2 orders that owners have linked to the site, 912 were reported as delivered on Monday, up from 811 six days earlier.
The number still waiting for a vehicle number rose to 683 from 509 over the same period.
Waits have lengthened. The median time from configuring an order to being assigned a vehicle number was 15 days for completed orders, against 12 days on September 29, and stood at 20 days for those still waiting.
The tracker covers only owners who registered on the ‘Rivian Roamer’ platform, a small share of R2 buyers.
In Colorado, the R2 ranked fourth among electric models in August with 136 registrations, state data show.
Rivian’s own comments point the same way.
Chip Newcom, the company’s VP of Investor Relations, said at a Goldman Sachs conference in September that conversion from reservations was running ahead of expectations and that each new trim was bringing more orders.
Early Quality Questions
The ramp has not been free of problems.
Rivian told some R2 owners to stop driving in late September pending checks on high-voltage fasteners, and later said only 14 vehicles were affected.
An R2 owner said on Sunday that Rivian is replacing his vehicle after continued problems with its air conditioning compressor.
“Engineering wants to use my car to learn more,” the owner wrote.
The US auto safety regulator had three owner complaints on file for the R2 as of Monday, none of them about air conditioning.
‘A Quieter Piece of Our Coverage’
Kallo acknowledged that EV have drawn less attention from Baird’s clients.
“While EVs have been a quieter piece of our coverage (in terms of investor inbounds) over the last several quarters, we believe there are industry tailwinds including new models rolling out, rising fuel prices, and production costs declining,” he wrote.
He said Baird is updating its model for the delivery figures. The rating and the target were unchanged.
Rivian is due to report third-quarter results on October 29 after the market closes.
The Highest Target in the Range
Baird’s $23 target is at the top of the range among 12 analysts tracked by PT, whose median is $18.50.
The firm has held the target since February 13, when it trimmed it from $25.
Monday’s note is the fifth time Baird has reiterated its view since then, after notes on April 6, July 6, August 4 and September 10.
In July, after second-quarter deliveries, Baird said the figure had slightly missed its own estimate, which was the highest on Wall Street.
This time Kallo said deliveries beat both Baird’s estimate and the consensus.
A Call Made for the R2
Baird upgraded Rivian to Outperform on December 18, 2025, raising its target to $25 from $14.
“We are upgrading RIVN to Outperform as we move into 2026 which is the year of the R2 launch,” Kallo wrote in the upgrade note.
“We expect this to be a boost for RIVN’s brand, product demand, and thus by extension the stock as deliveries begin near mid-year,” he wrote.
The upgrade came exactly a year after Baird had downgraded the stock to Neutral, citing a lack of catalysts for 2025.
The demand part of the call has so far held, on the evidence of the third quarter. Rivian closed at $17.63 the day before the upgrade and has since fallen 19%.
