NIO urgently needs a second brand to boost sales.
On March 5th, NIO.US (09866. HK) released its financial reports for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. According to financial report data, NIO achieved a revenue of 17.1 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, a year-on-year increase of 6.5%; The net loss in the fourth quarter was 5.368 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.2%. The gross profit margin of the whole vehicle is 11.9%, 6.8% in the fourth quarter of 2022, and 11% in the third quarter of 2023; The R&D investment was 3.97 billion yuan, exceeding 3 billion yuan for five consecutive quarters.
Overall, in 2023, NIO achieved a total revenue of 55.62 billion yuan, reaching a historic high with a year-on-year growth of 12.9%; The net loss for the whole year further expanded by 43.5% to 20.72 billion yuan.
In terms of cash reserves, thanks to two rounds of strategic investments totaling 3.3 billion US dollars by Abu Dhabi investment firm CYVN in the second half of last year, NIO's cash reserves have surged to 57.3 billion yuan by the end of 2023, an increase of 12.1 billion yuan from the previous quarter.
In terms of delivery, in the fourth quarter of 2023, NIO delivered a total of 50000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 25%; The total number of vehicles delivered in 2023 was 160000, an increase of 30.7% compared to 2022. In January of this year, NIO delivered 10100 cars and 8132 cars in February; As of February 29, 2024, NIO has delivered a total of 467800 vehicles.
NIO expects a revenue of 10.499 billion to 11.087 billion yuan and a delivery volume of 31000 to 33000 vehicles in the first quarter of 2024.
At the conference call for NIO's fourth quarter and full year financial reports in 2023, NIO CEO Li Bin expressed optimism about NIO's sales this year and confidence in returning to the monthly sales level of 20000 vehicles.
The second brand will be released in the second quarter and delivered in the fourth quarter
Recently, multiple netizens exposed photos of NIO's second brand disguised as a road test car. Li Bin stated that the second brand will be released in the second quarter, the first car will be released in the third quarter, and vehicle delivery will begin in the fourth quarter. Li Bin used "very satisfied" to describe this first license plate that entered the mass market.
He introduced that the first car of the second brand is currently being tested and will compete directly with the Model Y. Currently, the cost will be about 10% lower than Tesla, which also gives NIO good pricing space.
In addition, Li Bin also added that based on current evaluations, there is no need for a particularly large quantity. A factory with around 10000 vehicles per month can achieve a cost 10% lower than Tesla. He emphasized that such cost reduction is mainly achieved through research and development investment.
Li Bin introduced that NIO's second brand is aimed at the mass market and focuses more on the home market. It plans to launch highly competitive car models for households of different sizes, and believes that the products are very competitive. The second car under this brand is an SUV, and the research and development progress is very smooth. It has entered the mold stage and can be launched in the market next year.
In addition, Li Bin also revealed that next year NIO will launch a new brand with a price of only a few hundred thousand yuan, and NIO's product market coverage will be wider.
Regarding the NIO brand, NIO has stated that the 2024 NIO model has been pre ordered and will be delivered gradually in early March. The performance upgrade of the 2024 model includes the integration of one latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 intelligent cockpit chip and four NVIDIA Orin X intelligent driving chips on the central computing platform ADAM.
Li Bin mentioned that this year, more emphasis will be placed on software delivery. NIO will launch a full push of NOP+, including highways, urban areas, and battery swapping, in the second quarter. The end side multimodal large model NOMI GPT is also about to be launched.
Regarding the focus of the two brands, Li Bin stated that NIO brand will still pay more attention to gross profit margin, which is oriented towards gross profit margin and will not use price wars to exchange for sales; The second brand, on the other hand, is more focused on sales rather than gross profit margin. Especially at the beginning, the priority of quantity is definitely higher. I believe this combination is also a better strategy for the company's long-term operation.
This year's competition incentives, but we also need to focus on cooperation
When asked about the fierce market competition this year, Li Bin said that in the Chinese automotive market, car companies are facing various types of competition, and competition is definitely beneficial for users. However, it cannot be ignored that while competition, cooperation between enterprises is also important.
On January 11th this year, Jianghuai Automobile and Chery Automobile respectively signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement for battery swapping with NIO. Chery Automobile and NIO will carry out comprehensive and multi-level deep strategic cooperation in battery standards, battery swapping technology, battery swapping service network construction and operation.
Among them, Jianghuai Automobile will not only cooperate with NIO in various fields such as battery replacement standards, but also deeply cooperate with NIO in the future planning of new energy vehicle models, launching "rechargeable, replaceable, and upgraded" models.
Prior to this, NIO had already reached strategic partnerships with Changan Automobile and Geely Holding for battery swapping.
"NIO is a very cooperative enterprise. I believe fierce competition will always exist, but from another perspective, it is also necessary to cooperate with foreign countries," Li Bin emphasized.
Regarding the overseas market plan, Li Bin stated that the NIO brand is mainly aimed at the high-end market, targeting the Chinese, American, and European markets. The second and third brands will have more opportunities to target more markets. Correspondingly, in terms of after-sales service, NIO's brands in China will adopt a direct sales approach, but in overseas markets, they will adopt a more flexible and faster investment return approach.
In addition, it is worth noting that NIO stated in the announcement that it has applied to the competent department of Anhui Province to complete the filing of investment projects for pure electric passenger vehicles and has been included in the list of automobile production enterprises under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. This also means that NIO has obtained the qualification for independent car manufacturing.
As of the close on the 5th, NIO Motor's US stock rose 2.81% to $5.48 per share.