Nio's effective pricing adjustments and more models offered to the market have driven solid sales, BofA said.
Bank of America raised its price target on Nio (NYSE: NIO), bullish that the company's solid delivery momentum will continue during the year.
Analyst Ming Hsun Lee's team raised their price target on Nio to $15.40 from the previous $13, maintaining a Buy rating, in a research note sent to investors on August 10.
Nio closed down 1.56 percent to $13.25 on the US stock market yesterday, and the price target implies a 16 percent upside.
CnEVPost would like to remind readers that Wall Street analysts' adjustments to price targets are the result of their tweaking of a few parameters in complex valuation models.
Therefore, it is more important to pay attention to why these top minds in the world are adjusting the parameters in their models than to the changes in the price targets.
Nio delivered about 20,500 units in July, and the solid deliveries led to an upward revision in the forecast for sale volume, the team said.
"July deliveries exceeded our previous forecast, as Nio had originally aimed to achieve 20k units of monthly sales in 4Q23," the team wrote.
As a backdrop, Nio delivered a record 20,462 vehicles in July, the first time since its inception that it has seen deliveries exceed the 20,000 mark.
ES6 deliveries of 11,118 units contributed 54.33 percent of Nio's deliveries in July, while the ET5 Touring contributed 17.89 percent at 3,662 units.
The record deliveries come after Nio stripped out the free battery swap entitlement that had been included in the vehicle's selling prices on June 12, lowering the starting prices of all models by 30,000 yuan ($4,150).
The effective price adjustment and the more models offered to the market -- the EC7, the new ES6 and the ET5 Touring -- have driven solid sales, according to Lee's team.
The team expects Nio's strong sales momentum to sustain into the fourth quarter, and raised their sales forecasts for Nio in 2023-2025 by 15 percent, 11 percent, and 17 percent, respectively.
In addition, the team believes that Nio's continued efforts to increase battery swap stations will help increase sales.
Earlier this year, Nio announced a goal of building 1,000 battery swap stations in China in 2023, to bring the total battery swap stations to 2,300 by the end of 2023, the team noted.
In late June, Nio signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), which will help Nio's infrastructure expansion pace, leading to a better user experience and boost in sales, the team said.
($1 = RMB 7.2307)
Nio Jul deliveries breakdown: ES6 at 11,118, ET5 Touring 3,662
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