| Before electric SUV and pickup truck manufacturer Rivian (Nasdaq: RIVN) went public in November 2021, I delivered a very clear message... I said, "Buying Rivian shares at this proposed valuation must surely be considered speculation, and I wouldn't call it a smart play." In other words, stay far, far away! It wasn't that I didn't like Rivian's products. In fact, I thought (and still think) that its electric SUVs and pickup trucks were extremely cool. My problem was with the company's stock market valuation. I thought it was ludicrously high. At that time, Rivian not only had never turned a profit but also had never even earned any revenue! Not a dime! Despite that, Rivian was targeting an initial valuation of close to $80 billion. The hype around Rivian going public had created a nonsensical stock market valuation. Since then, the hype has lessened, common sense has taken over and Rivian's stock has collapsed by almost 90%. Because in the stock market, valuation does matter eventually. But now something interesting has happened. Rivian's total stock market valuation is now almost equal to the amount of cash that the company has on its balance sheet. At the end of 2022, Rivian was sitting on $12 billion in cash, which equates to just over $13 per share. Meanwhile, Rivian shares now trade for just $13.49 as of this writing. This means that anyone buying shares of Rivian today is paying $13 for cash that the company has and only $0.49 for the Rivian electric vehicle (EV) business, worth roughly $1.7 billion. That $1.7 billion valuation is pretty wild considering that investors were willing to pay $115 more per share for this same business in 2021. The question now is whether paying just $13.49 for a share of Rivian's $1.7 billion electric car business is a good deal. | 
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