Citi raised on Monday its price target on Nio for the first time in nearly seven months, days after the Chinese EV maker pre-launched its new flagship SUV, and filed an annual report revealing it cut more than 10,000 jobs last year.
Analyst Jeff Chung lifted his target on Nio‘s Hong Kong-listed shares by 23.9% to HK$58.60 from HK$47.30 while maintaining a Buy rating he has held since June 2021.
The revision is the first upward move from the bank since September 2025, following three consecutive cuts that took the target from HK$65.90 to HK$47.30.
The move came as Nio‘s Hong Kong shares closed 7.47% higher at HK$52.40 on Monday, mirroring a 7.08% surge in the US-listed stock on Friday to $6.50.
The new target implies 11.8% upside from Monday’s Hong Kong close.
Citi is one of the most consistently bullish major banks covering Nio.
Chung has maintained a Buy rating since upgrading the stock from Neutral in June 2021 — nearly five years of uninterrupted conviction through a 90%-plus stock price plunge.
Nio‘s US-listed shares reached their all time high in January 2021 at $66.99.
Price Target History
Chung’s target has moved through a wide range over the past two years, reflecting a pattern of aggressive conviction punctuated by periodic recalibrations as near-term conditions shifted.
In June 2024, Citi cut the target to $8.50 from $10.40, lowering gross profit margin projections for 2024 and 2025 while extending net loss forecasts through 2026.
Three months later, Chung cut again to $7.00 before reversing course at the end of September 2024, lifting the target to $8.90 under the headline “Time to Load Up.”
That note cited Nio‘s orders-to-sales ratio of 3.33x — which “significantly surpassed the blended average” — and a strategic investment from Abu Dhabi-based CYVN Holdings that Chung described as “limited 3.8% equity dilution.”
In December 2024, Chung reiterated the $8.90 target after a management meeting, suggesting the stock could double from its then-price of $4.41.
He detailed Nio‘s 2026 breakeven roadmap: the Nio brand reaching 25,000 monthly sales at an average selling price of 350,000 yuan with a 20% gross margin, alongside Onvo at 35,000 to 45,000 monthly units at 220,000 to 250,000 yuan with a 15% gross margin.
The analyst also highlighted cost savings of 10,000 yuan per car from Nio‘s self-developed chips, replacing four Nvidia Orin processors.
Citi maintained the $8.90 target through January 2025 before cutting to $8.10 in March, following fourth-quarter earnings that showed vehicle margin pressure and slower-than-expected Onvo ramp-up due to battery supply constraints from BYD.
In late April 2025, Chung added Nio to the bank’s “30-Day Positive Catalyst Watch” for the first time, citing new model launches arriving “much earlier than the consensus expected” and projecting 63,000 deliveries in Q2 — a 50% sequential jump.
He raised his 2026 sales estimate by nearly 150,000 units and suggested volume could re-rate to 600,000 units.
After reaffirming his $8.10 target following Q2 2025 results in early September, Chung raised it to $8.60 on September 23, adding Nio to the catalyst watch for a second time.
The move followed the unveiling of the third-generation ES8, which launched at a significantly lower starting price at Nio‘s annual event in Hangzhou.
At $8.60, Citi held the highest price target on Wall Street. Chung lifted his 2026 and 2027 sales projections to 500,000 and 571,000 units respectively, raised gross margin estimates by 0.8 to 2.8 percentage points for 2025-2027, and projected Nio would turn free-cash-flow positive in Q4 2025.
The optimism was short-lived.
Last November, Chung cut the target to $6.90, citing a weaker fourth-quarter volume outlook, slowing orders, intense competition, and limited visibility into the first quarter of 2026.
A further cut to approximately $6.20 — and HK$47.30 on the Hong Kong shares — followed around Nio‘s Q4 2025 earnings release on March 10.
Monday’s raise to HK$58.60 is the first increase since that September 2025 Street-high.
What Changed
The raise follows a stretch of improving fundamentals at Nio. The company posted its first-ever quarterly GAAP profit in Q4 2025, reported fourth-quarter revenue growth of 76% year over year, and delivered 83,465 vehicles in Q1 2026 — a record.
On Friday, China International Capital Corporation raised its Nio target by 23% to HK$61.5 and $8.00 for the US-listed shares, citing a “robust pipeline” following the pre-launch and pre-order opening for the ES9, Nio‘s new flagship SUV.
The company’s workforce shrank by more than 10,000 people in 2025, Nio‘s annual report filed with US regulators on Friday revealed.
The Shanghai-based EV maker ended the year with 35,032 full-time employees, down from 45,635 at the end of 2024.
EV exclusively reported on the job reductions throughout 2025 as they affected headquarters, European, and US operations.
The cost discipline — alongside product mix improvement and the digestion of prior battery and semiconductor inventories — has contributed to margin expansion.
Citi’s Core Thesis
Across more than a dozen notes over the past two years, Chung’s thesis has rested on four pillars that have remained constant even as price targets fluctuated.
First, volume growth through the multi-brand strategy.
Nio now operates three brands — the premium Nio line, the mass-market Onvo, and the compact Firefly — giving it access to price segments ranging from roughly 100,000 yuan to above 700,000 yuan.
Chung’s 2026 sales estimates have ranged from 456,000 to 600,000 units, depending on launch timing and order momentum.
The official target ranges between 456,000 and 489,000 units, which represents a growth of 40-50% from 2025 figures.
Nio MENA
A year and a half after Nio and Abu Dhabi-based CYVN Holdings announced their Middle East joint venture in the presence of two heads of state, most of the commitments made at the founding remain unfulfilled or only partially delivered, as EV reported over the weekend.
The venture — branded Nio MENA — was established in October 2024 with plans to bring Nio’s full product ecosystem to the region, including sub-brands, a battery swap network, an R&D centre focused on autonomous driving and AI, and a bespoke model developed for the local market.
Eighteen months later, none of those initiatives have materialised.
Industry Warning
Separately, Nio‘s founder and CEO William Li warned in a speech over the weekend that the industry wastes “hundreds of millions of yuan per model”.
The EV maker’s chief called for standardization of batteries and chips, allowing all players in the industry to save costs on the development of each model.
Nio‘s Hong Kong-listed shares have risen 121% from their April 2025 low of HK$23.70 but remain 15% below the HK$61.75 high reached in October 2025.
