tl;dr: A year and a half later, the plan is coming to fruition.

In my first post about Rivian, I explained why I thought Rivian was a great investment opportunity who is following the Tesla playbook in order to successfully become a mass-market auto maker with legions of diehard fans. Tesla, while still producing lots of cars, is a acompany in decline because they completely lost the plot. They still sell a lot of cars, but have discontinued their two high-end models, the Model S and Model X. The Cybertruck is, unsurprisingly, a collossal flop. They still sell a lot of Model 3's and Y's, but they have lost interest in cars and seem to be abandoning that in favor of robotics and "AI".

Unprecedented challenges

So, what's happening with Rivian these days? Well, Rivian has faced significant headwinds: A presidential administration and congress intent on crippling the EV industry, an increasingly successful oil/gas lobby, and major chip shortages due to the speculative "AI" boom. By all accounts, a failure by Rivian would be unfortunate but understandable.

Instead, they're succeeding.

A homerun

The R2 has just begun deliveries, and every single review is glowing. By all accounts, the R2 is an amazing achievement.

Demand has been very high too. I visited a Rivian Space (i.e. a showroom) in Chicago and in order to book a test drive, interested reservation holders (yes, you have to be a reservation holder) have to pounce on a time slot no more than 24 hours in advance, as they are released. I was able to get a test drive (through sheer force of will) and I couldn't agree more with the reviews. It's really everything I hoped for, and I'm counting the hours until I can get it in my garage. My estimated delivery window is in September or October of this year. For those who reserved later, their estimated delivery dates stretch into next year. Also, this is the timeline for the purchase opportunity of a R2 Performance Launch Edition. More affordable versions will have to wait until next year. Due to the extreme demand, Rivian is adding 50% more initial capacity at their future Georgia plant to meet their expected needs.

Enough, let's get to the numbers!

This is all very encouraging, but we're here to talk about the RIVN stock prospects. So, what's happened since the last post? Here's the chart:

There's an undeniable upward trend. The stock has crossed $20 per share twice. The most recent one happened just a few days ago (July 6), when Rivian took advantage of the price surge to offer an additional 75 million shares for purchase. This diluted the share price for existing holders, pushing it down to around $16 per share. This is ostensibly to give the company some cushion as the ramp up production. As discussed in my last post, Tesla was famously hours away from insolvency when their production ramp started, and Rivian doesn't want to repeat that. Even with the current price down due to dilution, if you had purchased RIVN after my previous post, you'd be up 59%. Compare that to the 30% gain in the S&P 500 in the same time period:

So much more upside

So, we're already on the right track. Even so, I think there is still so much more upside to RIVN. The production ramp is still starting, meaning the market hasn't truly realized the earnings potential when R2's really start selling in high numbers. As we've seen, they will. If you missed the boat at $10 per share, now is the second-best time to jump on the bandwagon. I plan on riding my R2 to a serious gain, thanks to Rivian's excellent execution and sage planning. See you on the rocket ship!

Disclaimers

Like I said before, I'm not a financial advisor, or accountant, or anything with letters after my name. I'm only a financial advisor to myself. I believe in Rivian's future for the reasons outlined here and before, and have bought even more RIVN since the last post.