FirstFT: Electric vehicle shares in overdrive after strong volume data

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Good morning. US electric vehicle start-up Rivian Automotive revealed stronger-than-expected production figures a day after larger rivals Tesla and BYD reported robust deliveries, sending shares of the companies up sharply on Monday.

Rivian said that it built 13,992 trucks and vans at its factory in Normal, Illinois, in the second quarter, well above Wall Street expectations of about 11,000, according to analysts polled by FactSet. The California company reaffirmed guidance for manufacturing 50,000 vehicles this year.

The update came after Tesla, the US EV leader, on Sunday said it delivered a record 466,000 cars in the second quarter, up 83.5 per cent from a year before. Sales increased after Tesla cut prices in January and March.

“Tesla and Rivian was major good news for the EV sector, as production and demand are humming despite many sceptics on the Street,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. “This was a trophy-case quarter for Tesla, and Rivian added to the fireworks with very impressive results for the June quarter.”

BYD, Tesla’s main rival in China, also reported sales volumes grew by almost double in the first half of 2023, as it sold 1.26mn vehicles in the six months to the end of June.

Shares of Rivian closed 17.4 per cent higher in New York on Monday, in a shortened session ahead of the Independence Day holiday, while Tesla climbed 6.9 per cent. BYD closed up 4.5 per cent in Hong Kong.

• More EV news: US electric truck start-up Nikola is heading for a showdown this week with its founder Trevor Milton, who was convicted of securities fraud last year after he urged other shareholders to reject the company’s latest effort to raise cash.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• Australia: Australian Reserve Bank will announce its cash rate target. Economists are split over whether the central bank will raise the cash rate to 4.35 per cent or pause. (Reuters)

• Thailand: Parliament is expected to choose a House speaker. Progressive opposition party Move Forward and the biggest partner in its coalition, the Pheu Thai party, have wrangled over which will get the important position. (Associated Press)

• US: Markets are closed for Independence Day celebrations.

Five more top stories

1. US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen will visit China this week, becoming the second Biden cabinet official to travel to Beijing as the countries boost efforts to stabilise their turbulent relationship. A senior Treasury official cautioned that the trip was unlikely to produce “significant breakthroughs”. Read more on Yellen’s planned trip.

2. Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded dozens more as the Jewish state deployed armed drones and hundreds of troops in the largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in years. The assault on a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin fuelled fears that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is on the brink of a broader escalation.

3. Apple has made drastic cuts to production forecasts for the mixed-reality Vision Pro headset less than a month after its launch. The complexity of the headset design and difficulties in production are behind the scaling back of targets. Read more about the Vision Pro’s production challenges.

4. HSBC is in advanced talks to poach a team of senior Middle East wealth managers from Credit Suisse, as it looks to challenge its rival in the Gulf. The loss of Credit Suisse Qatar chief executive Aladdin Hangari and up to five members of his team would be a blow to UBS, which last month completed the takeover of its Swiss rival and plans to build the biggest private bank in the region. Read the full story.

• More banks news: Bank of America has delayed a dividend announcement after the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test showed a significant discrepancy between how the regulator and the lender’s own risk managers predicted it would fare in an extreme downturn.

5. Saudi Arabia and Russia will extend or make additional cuts to oil production in August, the two most powerful members of Opec+ said, as they scrambled to boost the price of crude. Here are more details on the move by the Opec+ leaders.

The Big Read

A decade ago, many big pharmaceutical companies stopped trying to find treatments for Alzheimer’s, with research considered too costly. Former AstraZeneca researcher Gunilla Osswald did not give up, however, taking the helm at BioArctic, a Swedish start-up devoted to tackling the disease. This week, the US Food and Drug Administration will decide whether to fully approve lecanemab, BioArctic’s first commercially available drug candidate.

We’re also reading . . .

Chart of the day

Rising foreign investment in Vietnam is part of a growing “China plus one” strategy to redraw global supply chains. As rivalries grow between China and the US over technology and security, more companies fear curbs on what and where they can manufacture. As a result, many are supplementing production in China, still the world’s biggest manufacturing hub, with expansion to other countries.

Take a break from the news

Since the Covid pandemic, the shift to remote working has transformed office life and with it the face-to-face experience of summer internships. Faced with the new hybrid workplace, managers and interns have had to adapt to help interns fit in and thrive.

Additional contributions by Gary Jones and Gordon Smith