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Leo Sun, The Motley Fool
Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 3:54 PM 5 min read
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Nio (NYSE: NIO) has been a wildly volatile banal since its IPO successful 2018. The Chinese shaper of electrical vehicles went nationalist astatine $6.26 per share, and it skyrocketed tenfold to a grounds precocious of $62.84 during the buying frenzy successful meme stocks successful February 2021.
However, arsenic of this writing, Nio's banal trades astatine astir $5 per share. The bulls retreated arsenic its deliveries cooled off, its margins shrank, and it racked up steep losses. Could scooping up immoderate shares of this unloved banal beneath its IPO terms assistance acceptable you up for life?
Nio produces a wide scope of electric sedans and SUVs. It differentiates itself from its competitors with its swappable batteries, which tin beryllium rapidly replaced astatine its ain artillery swapping stations arsenic a faster alternate to accepted chargers.
Nio delivered its archetypal vehicles successful 2018, and its yearly deliveries surged astir 11-fold from 2019 to 2024. But aft much than doubling its yearly deliveries successful 2020 and 2021, its deliveries decelerated importantly successful 2022 and 2023 arsenic it struggled with proviso concatenation constraints, tougher competition, and China's economical slowdown.
Deliveries | 20,565 | 43,728 | 91,429 | 122,486 | 160,038 | 221,970 |
Growth (YOY) | 81% | 113% | 109% | 34% | 31% | 39% |
Data source: Nio. YOY = Year implicit year.
Nio's yearly conveyance margin, which had reached a grounds precocious of 20.2% successful 2021, besides shrank to 13.7% successful 2022 and 9.5% successful 2023 arsenic its pricing powerfulness waned. Its yearly nett nonaccomplishment much than quadrupled from 2021 to 2023. All of those challenges -- on with commercialized tensions and rising involvement rates -- drove distant bulls.
After 2 years of slowing growth, Nio's maturation successful deliveries accelerated again successful 2024. Its concern stabilized arsenic it grew its marketplace stock successful China and expanded successful Europe.
That betterment was driven by its unchangeable income of its ET sedans, ES SUVs, and EC crossovers, arsenic good arsenic the motorboat of its lower-end Onvo L60, which resembles Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA) Model Y but starts astatine conscionable 149,900 yuan ($20,646). It besides continues to grow crossed Europe adjacent arsenic it faces higher tariffs connected Chinese-made EVs crossed the region.
But contempt that pressure, Nio's quarterly conveyance margins stabilized successful 2024, increasing from 9.2% successful the archetypal 4th to 12.2% successful the 2nd 4th and 13.1% successful the 3rd quarter. It expects that fig to emergence again to 15% erstwhile it posts its fourth-quarter net study connected March 21. It attributes that betterment to its little worldly costs and its rising income of premium vehicles (including its ET7 Executive Edition sedan) successful China, which mostly offset its little mean selling prices.