(New York) Rivian, an American manufacturer of pickup trucks, SUVs and electric pickup trucks, announced Tuesday evening that it had raised $ 11.9 billion on the occasion of its IPO on Wall Street with an IPO price of $ 78 l ‘share and by issuing more securities than initially planned.
This represents a valuation of $ 67.9 billion if stock options and other convertible shares are not taken into account.
This level is well above what the company expected in early November, when it proposed a range of between $ 57 and $ 62 per share.
The company had initially planned to issue 135 million new securities for the occasion, but in view of investor demand, increased this amount to 153 million, she said in a statement released Tuesday evening. It also reserved the right to issue an additional 22.95 million shares within 30 days at the IPO price.
If this option is exercised, the company will have raised $ 13.7 billion in new money and would be valued at $ 69.7 billion.
The group will thus make a stormy entry into the NASDAQ under the symbol RIVN since it is valued almost as much as Ford (80.4 billion) or General Motors (85.11 billion) even though the company has just released its first production line vehicles.
It delivered its first pickup trucks, called R1T, in September and plans to sell its first SUVs, the R1S, in December.
At the end of October, it had an order book for 55 4000 R1T and R1S that it expected to deliver by the end of 2023.
Rivian also plans to deliver 100,000 vans to Amazon by 2030.
The company is capitalizing on the investor craze for electric vehicles, which saw Tesla recently rise above the symbolic $ 1 trillion market cap mark.
It was founded in 2009 by Robert Scaringe, a car enthusiast who wanted from the end of his studies to focus on a means of transport that pollutes less than a traditional automobile.
He initially thought about developing a sports car, but changed his niche in 2012 to look at larger vehicles.
Rivian is sometimes presented as the new “Tesla” in this niche.
This comparison is not necessarily justified, according to Jessica Caldwell of the firm Edmunds.
Tesla released its first model when no one really cared about electric cars, she told AFP.
Rivian “arrives on a market which already seems a little saturated” with other start-ups of electric vehicles like Faraday or Fisker, and especially with traditional manufacturers preparing to tumble on the niche.
“The largest manufacturer of pickup trucks in the world, Ford, is preparing to launch a more affordable vehicle, larger, under a better known brand, in the months to come”, the F150 Lightning, recalls the specialist.