Writing | Wei Xing

Editing | Pan Tan

On March 1st, 2023, NIO released its annual financial report for 2022. The data showed that the total revenue for the whole year of 2022 was RMB 49.2686 billion, which increased by 36.3% compared to 2021; however, the net loss was RMB 14.4371 billion, while the net loss for 2021 was RMB 4.0169 billion.

Although the revenue hit a new high, the net loss continued to enlarge due to continuous cost expenditure in many aspects. Taking R&D as an example, NIO’s total R&D expenditure for the full year of 2022 was RMB 10.8363 billion.

NIO’s founder, chairman, and CEO, William Li, said at the financial report conference, “In 2022, in order to establish long-term competitiveness, we resolutely invested in core technology and advantageous product R&D, and made positive progress in infrastructure layout and global market expansion, laying a solid foundation for the company’s long-term development.”

Compared to the not-so-pretty financial data, NIO’s sales data has been increasing steadily. The data showed that in 2022, NIO delivered a total of 122,486 vehicles, compared to 91,429 vehicles in 2021. As of January 2023, NIO has delivered 8,506 vehicles, and 12,157 vehicles in February 2023.

As the inventory of the old 866 model is cleared out, the focus will shift to the new models on the NT 2.0 platform. This year, NIO’s sales target is to double its sales compared to the previous year.

Aiming for 30,000 Monthly Deliveries

In order to achieve the goal of “doubling sales compared to the previous year,” NIO will deliver five NT 2.0 models this year, including four models, including the ES6, in the second quarter, and the fifth model in July.

NIO also decomposed it as follows:

ET5+ET5 Touring+ES6, with a monthly sales target of 20,000 units;

ET7, ES7, ES8, each model sells 2,000-4,000 units per month, totaling around 8,000-10,000;

EC6 and EC7 mainly pursue design and taste performance, with a monthly sales of 1,000-2,000 units.

This product combination can support a sales target of 30,000 units per month, says Li Bin.

As for pricing, there is always a stable pricing strategy and no plan to reduce prices through component reduction.

The Confidence Behind Setting This Goal

Firstly, user demand. After the entire product line switches to the NT 2.0 platform, it will cover 80% of the sub-segment market where BBA’s main sales models are located, and the product’s strength will have a crushing advantage. The overall product line will enter a stronger cycle and avoid the simultaneous sales of two-generation models.

Secondly, the charging and swapping system. This year, 1,000 new swapping stations will be added, providing support for entering more markets, such as third and fourth-tier cities.

Li Bin gave an example: Xingfu Town in Shandong.

This is a small town with a registered population of less than 50,000, but NIO has 500 users there. In the past, users there cooperated with NIO to build a swapping station. Later, another one was added after seeing an increase in users.

Currently, swapping stations are mainly located in first and second-tier cities, and NIO will enter more sinking markets more efficiently by increasing the number of swapping stations this year.

So it’s clear why, just three months after NIO DAY 2022, NIO expanded its plan for new swapping stations to 1,000 stations for 2023, with an expected completion of 2,300 swapping stations by the end of the year.

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According to reports, among the 1000 new charging stations, around 400 of them will be built at highway service areas or exits to accelerate the layout of fast-charging networks on highways, while about 600 will be deployed in urban areas, focusing on third- or fourth-tier cities and counties where there is a certain user base but no charging stations yet.

As Li Bin said at the earnings conference, “Sinking markets don’t necessarily need stores, but they definitely need charging stations.” Improving user experience is a very efficient way to increase users.

Thirdly, intelligent experience, the empowerment of the NT 2.0 platform, such as NOP+, standard computing power, and sensors, a good overall data closed-loop. The experience of the cockpit is also being improved, and the release of functions will increase product strength.

Reduce costs and increase efficiency, achieve a break-even point as soon as possible.

While increasing sales of on-sale models, cost reduction and efficiency must still be taken into account in order to achieve the goal of breaking even as soon as possible.

For example, if the price of raw materials falls at the current expected rate, the NIO brand will achieve break-even by Q4 2023 without change.

In addition, NIO will introduce new battery partners this year. It is reported that in March, NIO and CITC Power will launch their battery pack. At the same time, they are currently discussing a new price mechanism with CATL, but it has not yet been signed. But in general, battery companies will need to bear the fluctuations in battery prices together with automakers.

While solid-state batteries are being pushed into mass production, the battery R&D team is also helping its partners and hoping to deliver them for use as soon as possible.

Efficiency improvement is the focus of this year’s work. The team grew quickly last year and new projects were added. The focus this year is to improve productivity rather than reduce staff or close projects, and to pursue more output with the same workforce. Time and investment priorities will be considered for R&D and fixed asset investments. The overall focus is on output quantity, output quality, and resource priorities.

The overall investment scale of new business this year is CNY 4-5 billion, which means an investment of about CNY 1 billion per quarter. The overall goal is to achieve a break-even point for the entire company by 2024.

Conclusion

From the planned time of product development, new models will only start to be delivered one by one starting from the second quarter. Therefore, the period from the second quarter onwards is the time for large-scale deliveries, and the new ES6 non-air suspension should be the best-selling model that can carry the sales target in the future. There is still a lot for NIO to do throughout 2023.# 这是一个标题

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This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.