Nio reports wider second-quarter loss amid China slowdown and product line revamp

Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio lost $835.1 million in the second quarter, more than twice its year-ago loss as deliveries of its upscale EVs slipped amid a transition to an updated vehicle platform and a broader economic slowdown in China.

Here are the key numbers from Nio’s second-quarter earnings report, compared with Wall Street estimates as reported by Refinitiv.

• Revenue: 8.77 billion yuan ($1.21 billion), vs. 9.25 billion yuan expected.
• Adjusted loss per share: 3.28 yuan (45 cents), vs. 2.45 yuan expected.

The company’s shares were down 9% in early trading following the news.

Nio’s adjusted figures exclude share-based compensation expenses. On a GAAP basis, the company reported a net loss of $835.1 million, or 51 cents per share.

In Chinese yuan, the company reported a net loss of 6.06 billion, or 3.70 yuan per share. A year ago, Nio reported a net loss of 2.76 billion yuan, or 1.68 yuan per share, on revenue of 10.29 billion yuan.

Nio’s gross margin on vehicles for the second quarter was 6.2% in the second quarter, down from 16.7% a year ago but up from 5.1% in the first quarter of 2023.

Nio launched a revamped version of its mainstay ES6 crossover on its new “NT2.0” platform in May, and a station wagon version of its ET5 sedan in June. The refreshed lineup is already driving better results, with 20,462 vehicles delivered in July alone.

The company delivered just 23,520 vehicles in the second quarter as it sold down the last of its outgoing models with substantial discounts.

CEO William Bin Li said in a statement that the July result was enough to put Nio at the top of China’s sales charts for EVs priced above 300,000 yuan (about $41,000) for the month.

“We expect a solid growth in vehicle deliveries in the second half of 2023,” he said.

Nio also boosted its balance sheet in July, closing a $738.5 million equity investment from a fund controlled by the government of Abu Dhabi on July 12. The company had $4.3 billion in cash and equivalents on hand as of the end of June.

Nio now expects to deliver between 55,000 and 57,000 vehicles in the third quarter, up significantly from the 31,607 EVs it delivered in the third quarter of 2022. It expects its revenue for the period to fall between $2.61 billion and $2.69 billion, up from $1.83 billion in the year-ago period.