Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
On Tuesday, the research firm Grizzly Research mentioned NIO as Short following the report where the firm claimed that the EV maker is “likely using an unconsolidated related party” to inflate its revenue and also the profitability.
The report titled “We Believe NIO Plays Valeant-Esque Accounting Games to Inflate Revenue and Boost Net Income Margins to Meet Targets” says the EV maker is “selling batteries far in excess of Weineng’s requirements”.
During a Twitter Space held after the release of the report, the research firm CEO Siegfried Eggert was answering some questions from investors and enthusiasts of the electric vehicles sector. One of the main themes of the discussion was the number of batteries that the Shanghai-based company currently has and where it saves them.
One of the arguments used to justify that number was the fact that NIO needs a lot of batteries given its current vehicles on the road and its expansion pace. By then, the CEO of Grizzly Research was asked about how many vehicles NIO has on the roadsas of today and replied “100,000 vehicles”.
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How many cars does NIO have on the roads?
Although we don’t know the exact number of vehicles that NIO has delivered as of June 28, it is certainly much more than the 100,000 mentioned by Grizzly Research. On April 7, 2021, the company announced the production of the 100,000th vehicle. Six weeks ago (May 15) NIO delivered its 200,000th vehicle and ended the month with cumulative deliveries of 204,936 vehicles — after delivering 7,024 units in May 2022.
The number mentioned by Grizzly Research was, in fact, achieved 14 months ago, in April 2021. Recently, NIO said that, for the second quarter of 2022, expects to deliver between 23,000 and 25,000 vehicles.
Considering that the EV maker delivered 5,074 units in April and 7,024 in May (a total of 12,098 units), the company is now expecting to deliver between 10,902 and 12,902 vehicles in June. The guidance indicates that NIO sees the monthly deliveries reaching a new all-time high now that the Shanghai lockdown measures were eased.
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Based on these calculations and considering that we are in the last days of the month, NIO should have around 215,000 – 217,500 vehicles on the road, 115,000 more than the number indicated by the author of the report.
Number of batteries for NIO vehicles
Another key point of the report released earlier today is the number of batteries that NIO sold to Weineng. The author says the EV maker “flooded Weineng with up to extra 21,053 batteries” when selling a total of 40,053 batteries by the end of September 2021.
Grizzly Research concludes that with 19,000 battery subscriptions by then, Weineng should only have 19,000 batteries in its inventory representing only one per user. The report clearly shows a poor understanding of the system used by NIO and how indispensable it is for the company to have more than one battery per user to allow a swap without having to wait for the charging period.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter