Can NIO "live a hundred years"?
Author | Zhao Pu
Editing | Interesting Business
"Peers don’t have the same life", Li Auto (2015.HK) announced that the performance rose at the same time, NIO US stocks suffered ratings and target share prices fell.
According to the annual report data released by Li Auto on February 26, the company’s revenue in 2023 was 123.851 billion yuan, and its net profit was 11.809 billion yuan, which rose 173.48% and 681.06% year-on-year respectively. The two performance indicators reached a new high; its Hong Kong stock price also ushered in a sharp rise of over 23% on February 27. The closing price of the day was 172.3 Hong Kong dollars. As of February 29, Li Auto’s closing price was 177.3 Hong Kong dollars/share, and the market value of Hong Kong stocks was 313.10 billion Hong Kong dollars.
On the same day that Li Auto released its earnings report, the target price of NIO US stocks, which used to be a "new power" partner, was lowered from $8.50 to $5 by JPMorgan Chase. This is the second time that JPMorgan has lowered the target price of NIO since December last year. On February 29, NIO US stocks were trading at $5.43 per share.
Image source: screenshot of Oriental Fortune
Just on February 27, when Li Bin, founder and chairperson of NIO, was live, netizens in the live stream commented on both support and sharp doubts; when asked "when will NIO go out of business", Li Bin cleverly replied, "This question cannot be answered, and it must be answered by the majority of users. If everyone does not support it, we will have no meaning in life. If they support us, they will surely live a hundred years."
Image source: Weibo screenshot
Li Bin also said in the live broadcast that his annual salary is less than one million, "I am quite miserable in cash now," because everyone in the company has the same travel expenses. If he wants to stay in a better hotel and take a better car, he needs to make up the price difference, and he has to pay a lot of money in a year.
01. Sales volume, share price, and rating are all "downgraded"
Recently, NIO "downgrade" signals have been frequent.
In December last year, JPMorgan Chase lowered the target price of NIO from $10.50/share to $8.50/share. On February 26, NIO was lowered again by JPMorgan Chase to $5/share. NIO’s US stock price has been lowered twice, and the cumulative reduction has exceeded 50%. In addition, NIO’s US stock rating has also been reduced from "neutral" to "underweight".
The "Interesting Business" query found that the lowest price in the history of NIO US stocks appeared in 2019, at $1.19 per share.
JPMorgan said in the report that the NIO Group has fewer new models for 2024, with only one new mass-market model called the "Alps", which may not be available until the fourth quarter. In addition, while the lack of new models, considering that peers such as XPeng Motors and BYD joint stock company are expected to launch new models, "mass market competition is likely to only intensify".
Image Source: Canned Food Gallery
Due to the lack of new models to impact sales, NIO’s sales target in 2024 was lowered to 230,000 vehicles, a decrease of 15,000 vehicles compared with 2023, but NIO’s actual sales in 2023 were about 160,000 vehicles, and the annual target was not completed. Whether the established target can be achieved in 2024 also needs to be verified.
Accompanied by the above-mentioned "downgrade" signals, NIO’s share price has fallen from about 72 Hong Kong dollars per share to 43.8 Hong Kong dollars per share from 2024 to February 29, with a cumulative decline of 39.79% in the first two months of the year. The latest Hong Kong stock market value is about 68.79 billion Hong Kong dollars, which is about 22% of the total market value of Li Auto.
Image source: screenshot of Oriental Fortune
In contrast to Li Auto, some investors joked that "the ideal is about to break new highs, and NIO is about to break new lows". From the historical stock price perspective, the lowest share price of NIO Hong Kong stocks appeared on February 6 this year, and the intraday share price fell to HK $41.55/share.
In the face of market concerns and doubts, Li Bin responded in the live stream that NIO still has tens of billions of funds, so you can rest assured. In addition, NIO will launch hundreds of thousands of new brands next year. At the same time, Li Bin said that NIO’s goal is to serve customers with different brands in the hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and hundreds of thousands.
According to "Interestingly Understanding Business", in early February this year, NIO sub-brand Alps was exposed to have a sedan and SUV models, with a price range of 200,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan, and will use NIO’s latest NT3.0 platform to build.
02. Does NIO dare to fight a "price war"?
When JPMorgan cut the target price of NIO’s US stock, it specifically mentioned that NIO’s management had emphasized that the company was unwilling to sacrifice profits to increase sales. Li Bin also said that the gross profit of NIO pure electric vehicles is relatively low.
In the eyes of industry insiders, NIO is constrained by cost constraints, making it difficult to keep up with the new round of "price cuts" since the beginning of the year. The launch of hundreds of thousands of models into the low-priced car market next year is also slightly lagging behind in time; after all, the "price war" of various new energy vehicle companies this year has been very intense. How much market share can NIO "take" next year?
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Zhang Xiang, a visiting professor at the Yellow River University of Science and Technology, believes that "the overall performance of NIO is still losing money. From this perspective, there is no room for NIO to reduce prices. This is easy to form a vicious circle: reducing prices will further reduce profits and increase the risk of losses; but in the case of competitors cutting prices, if you do not reduce prices yourself, it will be difficult to increase sales. If the sales scale is not large enough, you will not be able to reduce costs, and then there will be no room for price reduction."
To avoid falling into the above vicious circle, NIO must increase sales and reduce overall costs in order to be more proactive in the face of "price wars".
Regarding gross profit margins and price reductions, NIO founder and president Qin Lihong once said that NIO’s gross profit margin is not high, and companies with gross profit margins of 30% to 40% may be able to reduce prices appropriately, but NIO will not do so. According to NIO’s performance report for the third quarter of 2023, NIO’s gross profit margin for vehicles is only 11.0%.
In fact, NIO is relatively passive in the face of the industry’s "price war". In 2023, NIO’s sales only increased by about 37,500 units year-on-year, an increase of about 30.62% year-on-year. Compared with MIIT data, the sales of new energy vehicles in our country in 2023 were 9.495 million units, a year-on-year increase of 37.9%. That is to say, NIO’s sales growth is still lower than the industry average sales growth rate.
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"In terms of sales, the growth rate of NIO is lower than the growth rate of the industry, and there is a danger of being surpassed by other car companies." Zhang Xiang said that NIO’s 2024 sales models are still dominated by mid-to-high-end models of 300,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan. The market itself is relatively small in capacity and more competitive. In addition to traditional car companies BBA, other new energy car companies are also joining this market. The mid-to-high-end market is already a red sea. It is also a helpless choice for NIO to reduce its sales target in 2024.
As for the power exchange business that Li Bin has always emphasized, Zhang Xiang also pointed out that there are certain obstacles. "The essence of power exchange is to unify the battery standards of various car companies, but many car companies are relatively resistant to this, especially large car companies such as Tesla and BYD. If each car company cannot unify the battery standard protocol, it will be difficult for the power exchange mode to become the mainstream of the market. With the continuous popularization of charging piles, the improvement of fast charging and super charging technology, the future charging mode is still the choice of most car owners, and there is a risk of being marginalized."
NIO 2023 third quarter performance report shows that the company’s third quarter revenue 19.07 billion yuan, an increase of 117.4%, an increase of 46.6%, cash reserves 45.20 billion yuan, an increase of 13.70 billion yuan, net loss of about 4.557 billion yuan, a decrease of 24.8%
Image Source: Screenshot of Corporate Financial Reports
In the face of cost and profit issues, Li Bin is also trying his best to expand space. Recently, NIO and Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Joint Stock Company signed a definitive agreement to acquire certain production equipment and assets from Jianghuai. The production equipment and assets of the first advanced manufacturing base and the second advanced manufacturing base will be purchased from Jianghuai. The total price excluding tax is about RMB 3.16 billion yuan.
Li Bin, chairperson of NIO, said at the earnings conference that "from a manufacturing perspective, if we make it completely independently, the manufacturing cost will drop by 10%".
In the face of the price war, NIO 2023 main models gave a price reduction of more than 20,000 yuan, but the 2024 models did not increase the price, avoiding direct entry into the "price war". Among them, 2024 ES8, EC7, ES6, EC6, ET5T will be delivered in March; 2024 ET5 will be delivered in April; 2024 ES7 will be delivered in May; 2024 ET7 will be released in April and open the lock order.
Li Bin also called on everyone to support NIO in the live stream, and he also tried to make NIO’s financial report look better as soon as possible.
Will you choose to buy NIO? Let’s chat in the comment area.
