CMB International upgraded Nio to Buy from Hold on Friday, the brokerage’s first Buy rating on the stock in roughly three years, capping a week of bullish analyst moves after the Chinese EV maker’s first-quarter results.
Shi was the third major analyst to lift his stance on Friday.
Citi raised its target to $8.20 while keeping a Buy rating, and Bank of America nudged its target to $6.80 but held Neutral, wary of margin pressure from rising raw-material costs.
CMB’s analyst Ji Shi set a price target of $7.00 on the US-listed shares, implying upside of about 25% from Thursday’s closing price of $5.60.
The $7.00 level matches the peak Shi reached in September 2025, when he lifted his target but kept a Hold — meaning Friday’s move is a conviction shift rather than a fresh high.
A Three-Year Wait
Shi has been among the more cautious China-auto analysts on Nio, holding a sidelined rating through the company’s deepest stretch of losses.
He carried a buy-equivalent call into early 2024 with a $6.80 target, citing a lighter discount strategy and lower battery costs.
By March 2025, he had cut the target to $5.00 and held it there, pointing to a revenue miss on softer pricing, higher selling and administrative costs, and limited room to trim spending while Nio funded its in-house chip and battery-swap programs.
His caution deepened later in 2025 before easing this year, as delivery and margin data improved.
Shi values Nio on a forward price-to-sales multiple, typically applying a discount to the stock relative to more profitable peers such as Li Auto and XPeng.
Friday’s upgrade brings his Nio call into line with the buy ratings he already held across much of his China-auto coverage.
What Prompted the Shift
The upgrade follows a first quarter that marked a turn in Nio‘s financials.
The company posted a narrow loss while staying profitable on an adjusted basis, with record first-quarter deliveries of 83,465 vehicles and vehicle margin improving for a fourth straight quarter.
Total revenue rose 112.2% to 25.53 billion yuan, while vehicle margin improved for a fourth straight quarter to 18.8% and gross margin climbed to 19.0% from 7.6% a year earlier.
The net loss narrowed to 332.1 million yuan from 6.75 billion yuan a year earlier, and the company posted an adjusted net profit of 43.5 million yuan, its second straight non-GAAP profitable quarter.
The cost discipline that supports Shi’s thesis was visible in the quarter, as research and development spending fell 40.7% and selling, general and administrative costs dropped 20.5% year over year.
That restraint, alongside a richer product mix, narrowed the operating loss to 308.8 million yuan from 6.42 billion yuan.
Founder and CEO William Li used the earnings call to argue that Nio had established itself as a premium brand commanding higher prices.
The Nio brand carried an average selling price of 390,000 yuan in the quarter, which Li said was roughly 50,000 yuan above BMW’s.
“Our overall strategy is still to stabilize our prices,” Li said, adding that the company is “dialing back on some discounts and promotions” rather than chasing volume.
The company guided second-quarter deliveries to between 110,000 and 115,000 units and pointed to a steep ramp as new models reach the market.
The flagship ES9 SUV launches and begins deliveries on May 27, with management voicing confidence in demand as pre-orders accelerated.
A Margin Warning Tempers the Optimism
The same call that drew the upgrades also carried the caution that has kept other analysts on the sidelines.
Finance chief Stanley Yu Qu told analysts that raw-material inflation, spanning memory chips, lithium carbonate, copper and aluminum, would add around 10,000 yuan or more per vehicle from the second quarter.
He guided full-year vehicle margin to around 17% to 18%, at or below the level just posted, signaling limited room for further expansion.
That warning is what BofA cited in holding Nio at Neutral even as it raised its target.
A Slide That Defied the Upgrades
Nio‘s US-listed shares were trading 5.89% lower at $5.27 in Friday’s pre-market session, with the Hong Kong-listed shares closing 0.4% lower at HK$42.78.
The decline owed partly to a broad sell-off in US-listed Chinese stocks, after Beijing escalated a crackdown on the offshore brokers that channel mainland money into those shares.
Nio had also reversed sharply during Thursday’s earnings call after management warned of the same cost inflation that has kept some analysts cautious.
