Key Takeaways
- Rivian stock is 40% below its December high, and Stifel reiterated its Buy rating and $22 price target this week.
- Stifel is betting on R2, which became Rivian’s best-selling vehicle in the third quarter as revenue rose 38%.
- Analysts’ 2027 loss estimate widened over the past 90 days, and Rivian’s share count rose 18% in the first nine months of 2026.
- Stifel’s target needs a sales multiple only a little above Rivian’s 3-year average, but more dilution could keep the stock short of $22.
Rivian Automotive (RIVN) is down 40% from its December high, and Stifel thinks it can climb nearly all the way back. Analyst Stephen Gengaro reiterated his Buy rating and $22 price target this week, 63% above the stock’s latest close.
R2 and autonomy cost a lot of cash
In March, Rivian dropped its goal of positive adjusted EBITDA in 2027 to spend more on self-driving. In July, it sold 86.25 million shares at $15.50 each, 23% below the prior close. That helped take the share count from 1,240 million at the end of 2025 to 1,460 million on Sept. 30, an 18% jump.
The third quarter, reported Oct. 29, was a step forward: revenue rose 38% from a year earlier to $2.16 billion, and R2 became Rivian’s best-selling vehicle. But the car business still posted an $80 million gross loss, and free cash flow came in at negative $1.12 billion, against negative $421 million a year earlier.
Stifel is betting on R2
Gengaro has kept his $22 target since that report. His Buy rests on the quarter, the raised 2026 delivery guidance of 67,000-70,000 vehicles and R2 orders converting better than expected. And interim CFO Derek Mulvey said on the call that Rivian intends “to exit the quarter at an Automotive gross profit.”
TIKR tracks 25 analysts on Rivian. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Rivian, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Rivian’s Analyst Ratings
Does $22 add up?
The Street is less ambitious. Twenty-five analysts cover Rivian, and their consensus target is $18, 34% above the price, in a range from $10 to $25. That average is up from $14 a year ago:
Analysts expect revenue to more than double, from $5.39 billion in fiscal 2025 to $11.6 billion in 2027:
But the consensus loss for 2027 widened to $2.33 a share from $2.18 over the past 90 days, and Mulvey said Rivian expects “our R&D line to grow more significantly in ’27 than it did in ’26.”
The multiple Stifel needs isn’t a stretch. Rivian trades at [1.8x] the sales analysts expect over the next 12 months, against a 3-year average of 2.7x. At $22, it would trade at about 2.9x, a bit above that average and well under last December’s 4.5x:
Watch the share count
Rivian ended September with $5.5 billion in cash and short-term investments, plus a $1 billion Volkswagen loan in October, against that $1.12 billion quarterly burn. Every new share spreads the same sales over more stock, lowering each share’s value at any multiple. Its convertible notes could also become about 149 million more shares, and the 2029 notes convert at $20.13, below Stifel’s target.
So Stifel’s valuation math works, but its case skips how much bigger the share count could get before R2 pays for itself. I think Rivian can climb from here if R2 keeps selling, but I’d expect dilution to keep it short of $22 over the next year. Fourth-quarter results in early 2027 will show whether the car business turned a profit, and a profit without regulatory credits would make $22 look a lot more reasonable.
So what is Rivian stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
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