u/g8trjasonb

This is an estate sale. The seller has all kinds of things that they're selling cheap and this Bobcat appears to be one of them. I could use a piece of equipment like this for my property but I've never owned anything like it. Assuming everything works fine, do you agree that $4K is a steal?

EDIT: This has been confirmed to be a scam. Seller wants a "refundable deposit" before I can see the equipment. Yeah right.

TLDR: RIVN will begin to take off when the company shows consistent positive operating income. 2029 or 2030 is when that will likely happen.

Q2 earnings will be released this week and some here will be screaming at the stock ticker when it does what it has always done...stay relatively flat. In fact, RIVN investors should probably expect this trend to continue for quite some time. As an investor myself, I would love to be wrong about this, but this stock isn't going to begin to accelerate on hopes and dreams. At the end of the day, all that really matters is whether this Company (or any company) is profitable or not. This isn't exactly a novel concept or a unique take on RIVN. Many here have been saying this for a while. But the question is why is this true? Well, we don't have to look far for an answer.

TSLA has always been the model for RIVN, the Company. But their approaches have been different in many respects, thanks mostly in part to RIVN's massive IPO in 2021 that raised billions of dollars, which was something not available to TSLA when it went public. Hence, TSLA had to take a much more incremental approach. First with the Roadster, then the Model S, then the X, the 3, and the infamous Y. All over a span of roughly 10 years. What some forget, however, is that it took the Model Y, for TSLA to reach the critical mass needed to finally turn a full-year profit and that didn't happen until 2020, a full 10 years after their IPO. Up until that point, the TSLA stock price hovered between $10-$22 share since 2013, so 7 years! The market didn't care about the release of the Model X in 2015 or the Model 3 in 2017. It did respond favorably to the Model Y, but the stock didn't start its meteoric rise until after TSLA began reporting the early results from those sales. Take a look at the attached image where I graphed TSLA's quarterly results and line that up with their historic stock price. This really illustrates what I'm saying.

With billions in capital and a huge contract with Amazon, RIVN was able to be much more aggressive right out of the gate. It purchased a shuttered Mitsubishi plant and immediately began production of 3 different vehicles. This aggressive approach came at a cost though. Depreciation was through the roof and inefficiencies were inherently much higher than if they had just focused on one vehicle instead. While their huge capital spend has continued each quarter, they have made strides on the gross profit front, thanks mostly to their JV with Volkswagen, but also thanks to product redesign improvements, continued manufacturing efficiency gains, and a cheaper overall bill of materials. Still, it will take RIVN selling the R2 in similar quantities as TSLA sold the Model Y for it to reach a consistent and all important positive operating income. So when does that happen?

Considering that the Normal plant's maximum capacity is 215,000 vehicles, which is shared with the R1S, R1T, and EDV, it will take opening the Georgia plant and ramping up its 300,000 vehicle capacity to achieve this goal. That plant isn't expected to open until 2028 and there probably won't be meaningful production until 2029. It's only at this point that we should expect to see RIVN truly in the green. But even then, it may take until 2030 before RIVN realizes its first full-year profit.

So, is this a bad thing? Does it imply that RIVN is doing something wrong? Actually, no it isn't and no it does not. If a 2030 profit comes to fruition as expected, then RIVN will have achieved something that only 3 other US automakers have ever done (Ford, Chevy, TSLA) and they will have done it a year and a half faster than TSLA.

Of course, a lot still needs to happen before then. An efficient R2 ramp goes without saying. Autonomy is a huge wildcard in all of this and it will require billions more in R&D investment, which will obviously drag down short-term profitability. RIVN must significantly close the gap with TSLA here. But the potential upside to autonomy is obviously on a massive scale that extends far beyond even RIVN's own vehicles, so the juice is definitely worth the squeeze.

So, in short, don't expect any big jump in this stock before 2030. We'll have some blips here and there when positive news breaks, just as we always have. Then we'll have the normal sell-offs. Its going to take much more than that for this stock to really begin to accelerate and sustain that momentum. Until then, continue to buy and accumulate. Or even invest in other things and start buying RIVN again in early 2029. Just temper your expectations and focus on R2 execution and mitigation of quality issues. That's the biggest risk for this company for quite some time.

The road up here was pretty treacherous at times and we weren't sure we'd get a spot, but we rolled the dice and it paid off. Free camping. Fire rings are provided but no other amenities. But who cares with a view like this. Shadow Mountain, Wyoming.