GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra addresses investors Oct. 6, 2021 at the GM Tech Heart in Warren, Michigan.
Image by Steve Fecht for Basic Motors
The massive valuations of electric powered auto commence-ups such as Rivian, which made its public debut Wednesday on the Nasdaq at a better inventory value and marketplace cap than Normal Motors, demonstrates the legacy automaker is “so undervalued,” GM CEO Mary Barra reported Wednesday.
Rivian’s inventory commenced buying and selling at $106.75 a share, a around 37% pop from its IPO selling price of $78 a share and a marketplace valuation of $91 billion. That compares with GM at $60 a share and a market cap of $86.4 billion.
“What it highlights to me is the big chance. Standard Motors is so undervalued,” Barra explained Wednesday with out especially naming Rivian all through The New York Occasions DealBook meeting. “I see it as massive option for General Motors to seize substantial extra value.”
When requested no matter if her competitors’ valuations make perception, Barra mentioned she isn’t going to check out them that way.
“I glimpse at each competitor as any person that I respect. And that we have to be improved, be quicker, have vehicles that people want to have, resolve the ownership equation,” she claimed. “So that is the way I seem at it. I would say if anything, it motivates me to do the job even more challenging.”
Rivian is viewed as one particular of the EV start out-up frontrunners able of taking on electric automobile leader Tesla, as GM and other common automakers make investments tens of billions of dollars in the emerging industry phase.
GM was fascinated in investing in Rivian, but its largest crosstown rival, Ford Motor, ending up investing in the EV start-up as a substitute. Ford, which owns about 12% of start-up, persuaded Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe that Ford would be a greater in good shape than GM, as not too long ago reported by the Wall Road Journal.
GM has announced plans to devote $35 billion in electric and autonomous automobiles through 2025, as it targets outselling Tesla in domestic EV profits by then.