Shares of Amazon.com Inc. surged toward a 10-month high on Friday, as the value of the e-commerce giant’s stake in Rivian Automotive Inc. has swelled by about $1.9 billion in the past eight sessions.
Amazon’s
AMZN,
latest disclosures showed that it owned 158.36 million shares of Rivian, which makes it the electric-vehicle maker’s largest shareholder with a 17% stake.
The investment hasn’t exactly been profitable for Amazon. The company booked an $11.8 billion gain on Rivian’s
RIVN,
stock in 2021 as the EV maker went public in November of that year, but a loss of $12.7 billion in 2022 and a loss of $467 million in the first quarter of 2023.
But with Rivian’s stock soaring 17% toward a seven-month high in afternoon trading Friday —and rocketing 88% amid a record-tying eight-session winning streak — the value of Amazon’s stake in the company has increased $1.88 billion during the streak.
Amazon’s stock jumped 1.8% on Friday, putting it on track for its highest close since Sept. 12, 2022.
In its first-quarter filing in late April, Amazon explained why it invested in Rivian: “We determined that we have the ability to exercise significant influence over Rivian through our equity investment, our commercial arrangement for the purchase of electric vehicles, and one of our employees serving on Rivian’s board of directors.”
Basically, Amazon’s been right, because what’s helped fuel some of the recent rally in Rivian’s stock was Amazon’s announcement earlier this week that the first of its electric delivery vans custom-made by Rivian were arriving in Europe.
Amazon already has more than 3,000 Rivian-made vans operating in the U.S. and plans to have 100,000 of the EV maker’s delivery vehicles operating globally by 2030.
Rivian’s stock has run up 63.4% since the end of the first quarter, while Amazon shares have gone up 26.5% and the S&P 500
SPX,
has advanced 7.9%.
Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co.’s
F,
stock climbed 1.2% on Friday. The automaker’s latest disclosure shows that it owned 10.5 million shares, or 1.15% of Rivian’s shares outstanding.
Over the past eight sessions, the value of Ford’s stake in Rivian has increased by $124.35 million.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
