UBS initiated coverage of Nio on Thursday with a Buy rating on both listings, setting a price target of HK$43 for the Hong Kong shares and $5.60 for the American depositary shares.
The US target is below the $8.50 the bank had carried on the stock a year ago, in September 2025, when analyst Paul Gong was covering the EV stock.
The Hong Kong target was set against HK$28.38, the price logged for the initiation on UBS’s disclosure site and the level at which the shares closed in Hong Kong on Thursday, down 4.5% on the day and their lowest close in at least a year.
It implies 51.5% upside. The US target of $5.60 is logged on the same site against $3.58, a level the ADS closed at on Thursday in New York and 56.4% below the target.
One Nio ADS represents one Class A ordinary share, and the Hong Kong line was listed by introduction in March 2022 without raising capital.
What UBS Says
“We initiated coverage on Nio-H with a Buy rating,” Gong wrote. “Nio has been beating investors’ expectations YTD for its profitability improvement, despite a muted share price performance.”
The analyst said investors remained sceptical of China’s domestic car market, but that Nio’s premium positioning and customer loyalty, together with a refresh of the ES6 and ET5 models in 2027, would “continue to drive revenue growth and margin improvement.”
“While China’s overall car market is in a low-growth stage and subject to volatilities, the premium market should continue to grow due to rising affordability and wealth accumulation,” he wrote.
“As volume growth of Xiaomi and Huawei Harmony-affiliated brands slow and Germany’s combustion cars continue to lose market share, we see market share gain opportunities for China’s premium EV brands like Nio.”
Gong wrote that Nio has this year been “the only premium brand besides Zeekr” to combine three things: volume growth of more than 50% year to date, a year-on-year rise in average selling price, and monthly sales sustained above 10,000 units six months after a launch.
The note does not specify which model the third point refers to.
However, Gong appears to be referring to the third-generation ES8 SUV, which was launched in September 2025 at the company’s annual event.
The US Line
The $5.60 target replaces the $8.50 set on September 16, 2025, when UBS upgraded the US shares to Buy from Neutral with the stock at $7.02 and which had stood unchanged for a year.
The new target is 34.1% lower, the largest reduction in percentage terms among the seven target changes since the September 1 second-quarter results.
UBS’s table shows the bank held the US shares at Neutral from at least June 2023, its earliest entry, through eight target changes: $13 in June 2023, $15 in July 2023, $8 in November 2023, $7.20 in March 2024, $5.20 in July 2024, $5.40 in July 2025 and $6.20 on September 2, 2025, before the upgrade two weeks later.
The new $5.60 target sits above the $5.20 and $5.40 levels of the two prior lows in the series.
The shares fell from HK$29.72 on Wednesday and traded as low as HK$28.06 during Thursday’s session, the bottom of their 52-week range.
The HK-listed shares rose 0.7% on Friday to HK$28.58.
Disclosures
UBS states on the same page that it has acted as manager or co-manager in the underwriting or placement of securities of Nio or an affiliate within the past 12 months, that it has received investment banking compensation from the company or an affiliate in that period.
Additionally, it adds that Nio is or has been a client of UBS Securities LLC or its affiliates for investment banking services.
RSI
The initiation comes with Nio’s US shares at their most oversold since 2019.
The 14-day relative strength index on the daily chart closed at 20.26 on Thursday, according to Webull data, its lowest close since June 14, 2019, when it read 20.13, and the sixth consecutive close below the 30 line conventionally described as oversold.
The index closed at 22.46 on Wednesday, then already the lowest since October 2022, as EV reported on Thursday.
The record low is 16.92, set on October 1, 2019.
Six other banks cut targets between September 1 and 4.
JPMorgan to $4.50 from $7 with a downgrade to Neutral, Citi to $7.10 from $8.20, BofA to $5.20 from $6, Bernstein to $5 from $6, Freedom Broker to $4 from $7 and Goldman Sachs to $6.10 from $7.
Nio’s Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William Li said on September 4 that he found it “difficult to convince investors” and that the market was missing the company’s in-house AI capability, brand scarcity, energy business and community operation.
