Buying a new car used to come with awesome perks like the vehicle losing 20% of its value as soon as it left the lot.
Electric truck maker Rivian gave its customers a much cooler perk: shares for one of the hottest IPOs of the year.
Rivian went public on Wednesday…
…and the company reserved 7% of the IPO allocation for customers that put in preorders for its trucks and SUVs.
These individuals were allocated a max of 175 shares, which totaled $13,650 at the $78 IPO price, per CNBC.
Anyone that took the offer notched an easy 29% gain on its first trading day.
And another 20%+ on the 2nd day
Rivian — which many believe is the next Tesla — is now at $123 a share (and worth $120B), which is more than some no-name car manufacturers like Ford ($78B) and GM ($89B).
Don’t cry for Ford, though: It has a 12% stake in Rivian worth ~$14B (second to Amazon, with a 20% stake worth ~$24B).
Rivian isn’t the only startup to reward its stakeholders at IPO:
- Airbnb offered 7% of its IPO to hosts
- Lyft and Uber set aside IPO allocations and bonuses for eligible drivers
- Doximity — a Linkedin for physicians — set aside 15% of its IPO for doctors on the platform
There is one big difference
Unlike these other examples, Rivian doesn’t have actual customers.
It does have a 55k+ vehicle order backlog and projects Q3 revenue between $0 (yes, zero) and $1m. The biggest upside for Rivian is Amazon’s commitment to buy 100k of its vans by 2030.
In the near term, customers who bought Rivian’s pre-IPO shares probably aren’t complaining. Also, you can’t “lose 20% driving off the lot” if there’s no car!
