CLSA Lowers Nio’s Rating and Price Target

CLSA analyst Ding Luo downgraded on March 6, 2024, Nio from ‘Buy’ to ‘Outperform’ with a price target of $6 (down from $9.80).

“NIO’s 4Q23 ASP declined 1.8% QoQ to Rmb308k, which we view as is acceptable given the impact of discounts and mix changes.

Its net loss rose 20.8% QoQ to Rmb5.59bn and missed consensus by 10% as NIO has not reached a large enough scale.

We expect its sub-brand, Alps, which will launch in 3Q24 with mass deliveries in 4Q23, to be appealing from cost-performance perspective.

NIO has made steady progress on the construction of its battery swapping network, and targets more than 3.3k swapping stations by year end.

However, seeing slower growth we lower our estimates, switch to a P/S valuation with slow profitability improvement, cut our target price from US$9.80 to US$6.00 and downgrade our rating from BUY to O-PF.”

This research note is reproduced verbatim from the issuing firm. Price Target never edits, paraphrases or alters analysts’ words — we only republish them in one place.