Nio surges as CFO is 'very confident' in 250K vehicle sales target

© Reuters

By Michael Elkins

Shares of Nio Inc (NYSE:NIO) are up 2.80% in premarket trading on Wednesday following comments by CFO Steven Feng where he said the company is “very confident” of meeting its target of doubling sales to 250,000 electric vehicles this year. The comments, made during a Bloomberg interview, provoked a surge in the company’s Hong Kong shares (HK:9866).

“We are very confident to achieve our sales target in 2023,” Feng said in the interview. That will be achieved with new models, expanding the company’s charging and battery-swapping network, and unlocking autonomous driving technologies, he said.

Nio shares jumped as much as 8.6% in early Hong Kong trading, taking their advance in the past two days to about 18%.

Meeting the quarter-million sales goal would be a milestone for the Chinese automaker. Nio delivered 122,486 cars in 2022, up 34% from a year earlier but still short of the company’s original target. A miss prompted by China’s now-abolished COVID restrictions.

However, Nio now faces increasing competition in China, where a price war has broken out as domestic EV makers like BYD Co (SZ:002594) and major international brands like Volkswagen AG (ETR:VOWG_p) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) seek to boost sales.

The price cuts show the country has too many automakers, Feng said.

“We expect the industry to go through some profound consolidation,” Feng said. “It’s almost consensus that China now has too many automakers, but we have no plan to buy anyone.”

Despite recent gains, Nio’s shares in Hong Kong and the US have fallen more than 50% in the past 12 months. Worth almost double Ford when its market value peaked at almost $100 billion in early 2021, Nio is now valued at less than a third of the US auto company.