Rivian Automotive, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Rivian Third Quarter Fiscal 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, today's program may be recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Derek Mulvey, Senior Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Ravine's third quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining us on today's call, we have RJ Scringe, our founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, Jiten Bell, our chief growth officer, and Claire McDonough, our chief financial officer. A copy of today's shareholder letter is available on our investor relations website. Before we begin, I would like to remind you, during the course of this conference call, our comments and responses to your questions reflect management views as of today only, and will include statements from related to our business that are forward-looking statements under federal securities law, including, without limitation, statements regarding our market opportunity, industry trends, business operations, strategy and goals, our second domestic manufacturing facility, and our expectations regarding vehicle deliveries. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risk and uncertainties associated with our business. Except those may be required by law, Rivian does not have any obligation to update or revise such statements if circumstances change. For a discussion of the material risk and other important factors that could impact actual results, please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in our third quarter 10-Q filed with the SEC and today's shareholder letter, both of which can be found on our investor relations website at rivian.com slash investors. During this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is provided in today's shareholder letter. With that, I'll turn the call over to RJ, who will begin with the opening remarks.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon for our first earnings call. As Derek mentioned, just before this call, we published our shareholder letter, which includes an overview of the progress we have made over the recent months. I'd encourage you all to read it for additional details around some of the items we will cover on today's call. Before I dive into some of our recent milestones, I wanted to provide a quick overview of our business and mission for those who are new to Rivian. Our generation will have a profound impact on the planet and the world our kids, kids, kids will inherit. We can spend a lot of time on the specifics of climate change, but the reality is we, as society, are rapidly changing the composition of our atmosphere. If we want life as we know it to thrive for many generations from now, we must change. This is what inspired me to start Rivian, and it's what drives the decisions we make as an organization, including the decision to become a public company. The challenge of shifting off fossil fuels is as big as it comes, and it's going to require people, companies, and entire industries to come together in ways we never have before. From day one, our focus has always been to maximize impact, to keep the world adventurous forever. The word forever is a humbling word. It's very easy for us to think about the world in the context of our lives, but when you think about the world in the context of the many generations to come, it requires we not simply inspire people to buy our vehicles, we must inspire shift in behavior and a new relationship with the world around us. The transportation industry is at the very start of a transformation, bigger in scale than the shift from the horse to the automobile. The business model, value chain, customer model, and technology will be completely remapped as we redefine how we move people and goods on our planet. Rivian exists to create products and services that help our planet transition to carbon-neutral energy and transportation. Our business encompasses both the consumer and commercial markets. In the consumer space, we launched our R1 platform with our first vehicles, the R1T and R1S, our handshake with the world, and our first step in building a relationship with our customers. Engineered for all of life's adventures, our vehicles uniquely combine performance, capability, utility, and efficiency. As of yesterday, we had 71,000 pre-orders for our R1 vehicles. In the commercial market, we are bringing to market the Rivian commercial van platform. Our first vehicle on this platform will be our 700 cubic foot electric delivery van, or EDV 700. We designed these vehicles working closely with Amazon, who has placed an initial order of 100,000 EDVs. Our commercial vehicles are designed with a focus on safety, comfort, and ease of operation. They offer a step change in driver experience while also delivering a lower total cost of ownership. Every commercial vehicle sold to Amazon is complemented by FleetOS, our proprietary end-to-end centralized fleet management platform with a recurring monthly subscription fee. The 700 cubic foot EDV has achieved a range of 201 miles based on internal testing using official EPA test procedures. We have successfully received our certifications to sell these vehicles, and we plan to deliver our first saleable vehicles to Amazon this month. Both our consumer and commercial products are supported by a full suite of value-added services that address the entire vehicle lifecycle and deepen our customer relationships. Starting with a clean sheet, we built a vertically integrated ecosystem comprised of our vehicle technology platform, cloud architecture, product development and operational capabilities, products and services. Our ecosystem is designed to deliver rapid development cycles, structural cost advantages, and exceptional customer experiences. After a 12-year journey of getting our strategy and offerings ready for customer deliveries, it has been incredibly rewarding to see the excitement and enthusiasm for what we're building. Over the past few weeks, We've received many recognitions and acknowledgments from editorial and news outlets, including Newsweek, Forbes, Electric, and Edmunds. To add to this list, earlier this week, the R1T was selected as Motor Trend's 2022 Truck of the Year after an exhaustive testing program. This award recognizes the truck that pushes boundaries across all aspects, including safety, efficiency, value, advancement in design, engineering excellence, and performance. We are honored by this recognition and the opportunity to illustrate how a clean sheet technology-focused vehicle could eliminate long-accepted compromise. After years of meticulous attention to detail, it was rewarding to hear Motor Trend state that this may have been the most significant recognition that they have given since the start of the award in 1949. Additionally, earlier this year, we completed a world first, a historic all-electric crossing of the US and R1T on the Transamerica Trail. From a production perspective, I wanted to highlight a significant milestone for our team, the production and delivery of our first vehicles. As the first saleable R1T drove off the production line in September, I was joined by my family and thousands of colleagues to celebrate this exciting and emotional moment for our organization. And earlier this week, Claire and I purchased the first two saleable R1S vehicles. We're at a steep part of our climb, but I couldn't be more grateful to be alongside such a dedicated and passionate team who have poured their energy and soul into bringing these vehicles to life. I'll stop on this point for a second and speak to our manufacturing progress. Launching and ramping production of three different vehicles within a few months is an incredibly tough challenge. This production ramp requires the simultaneous ramp of our supply chain, hiring and training of our production workforce, equipment bring-up, and rapid iteration through production quality loops. These challenges have been exacerbated given the state of our global supply chain, tight labor market, and of course the complications from COVID. As of yesterday, we have produced 652 R1 vehicles and delivered 386 of these, including the production sale of our first two recently certified R1S vehicles earlier this week. With 13 working days left at our normal facility, our dedicated teams are working as hard as possible to get as many customers or vehicles by year end. For 2021, we expect to produce a few hundred vehicles short of our initial 1,200 vehicle production target. Following the start of production for the R1T, we made the decision to begin introducing the R1S into the R1 production line, ultimately ramping up the R1S in November while also ramping production of the R1T was more challenging than expected. We produced enough R1Ss to support validation and certification, which are critical for our R1S production ramp in early 2022. Given the importance of R1S, this was a strategic approach that we felt optimized long-term value for the business. We are encouraged by the progress and learnings our team continues to incorporate into our operations, and we have achieved our primary objective of certifying the R1T, R1S, and EDB 700 for sale this year. In early 2022, we plan to complete certification of the EDV500, which is both narrower and shorter than the 700. Our production ramp of the R1T, R1S, EDV700, and EDV500 will continue into next year, and we remain confident in our long-term manufacturing trajectory. Just as we are scaling our manufacturing facility, hundreds of our suppliers are also scaling their production to match our vehicle ramp rate. Our procurement team has remained nimble and continues to work with our supplier partners across all tiers to mitigate issues stemming from our supply chain, the labor market, and the COVID pandemic. Given the uncertainty within the supply chain, we've decided to carry higher inventory levels than previously assumed to help ensure we consistently have parts to build. The good news is we do not believe any of our supply chain challenges represent long-term systemic issues. While our product development and manufacturing teams have been focused on ramping our normal production facility, our real estate and facilities team have been working diligently to ensure we remain well-positioned to capture and drive the accelerated large-scale adoption of sustainable transportation. We are excited to announce today our partnership with the state of Georgia, which will be the home of our second U.S. manufacturing facility. The site selection was the culmination of a comprehensive process in which the Rivian team evaluated a variety of sites across the country looking for the right combination of site location and logistics, access to talent, and proximity to suppliers. This project represents the largest economic development deal in Georgia's history. The facility will be east of Atlanta in Morgan and Walton counties and will employ more than 7,500 employees at peak production. From a construction perspective, we plan to break ground this coming summer with the intention of having the facility start producing saleable vehicles by 2024. The facility will produce our next generation of Rivian vehicles with an eventual target capacity of 400,000 annual units. I want to thank the entire state of Georgia. We're excited to make Georgia another home for us. The last major milestone I wanted to highlight was the completion of our initial public offering in November. in which we raised $13.7 billion of gross proceeds. We are extremely appreciative of the excitement and receptivity that our existing and new shareholders have shown. These funds enable us to execute on our near-term objectives, including the growth of our manufacturing capabilities, further investment into our vertically integrated technologies, and continued infrastructure and capabilities to support customer experience and engagement. As part of our IPO, we established Forever by Rivian, to extend our impact beyond the products we make and the associated competition they hopefully inspire. Forever's mission is dedicated to addressing our planet's climate crisis and preserving the critical biodiversity needed for our planet's long-term survival. With this, we donated 1% of Rivian's pre-IPO outstanding equity to Forever, making the natural world a stakeholder in our success. Forever will be focused on land conservation, sustainable consumption initiatives, preserving biodiversity, and research and educational stewardship. The value of Forever's equity is nearly $1 billion today, and I'm excited by the impact this donation can have in preserving the planet for future generations. Now I'll hand it over to Jitan who will touch on the customer engagement side of the business.