What happened
Nio (NIO 2.30%) stock shot up Friday morning, surging as high as 8.6% by 10:15 a.m. ET. After stagnating in recent months, Nio's deliveries rocketed in March, with the electric vehicle (EV) maker even setting a new quarterly record.
With the exciting update coinciding with an equally big development in China this morning, Nio shares were bound to take off.
So what
Here are the key numbers from Nio's latest delivery report:
- Total deliveries in March: 9,985 EVs, up 37.5% year over year and 63% sequentially.
- ET7 deliveries between March 28 and March 31: 163 units.
- Total deliveries in quarter ended March: 25,768 units, up 28.5% year over year.
- Cumulative deliveries across all models as of March 31, 2022: 192,838 units.
Two things stand out here.
First, Nio started delivering its flagship sedan ET7 on March 28, which means it delivered 163 cars in four days. That's despite the COVID-19 lockdown constraints.
Second, Nio set a quarterly record for deliveries.
Image source: Nio.
Meanwhile, in a statement to CNBC, the China Securities Regulatory Commission said consultations between the Chinese and U.S. regulators on audit requirements were ongoing, and that the commission even convened a meeting this week asking some accounting firms to prepare for "joint" inspection of audit.
This, by far, is the biggest effort China has made yet to break its stand-off with the U.S. on accounting standards. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently called for the delisting of stocks of foreign companies that failed to allow U.S. regulators to audit their books as required under the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act (HFCAA). The SEC so far has even publicly named 11 Chinese companies for failing to comply with HFCAA so far and warned them of delisting.
Now what
Nio made another announcement today: It is delaying the launch of its new SUV ES7 from April to late May. ES7 is Nio's first SUV to be equipped with Nio Technology Platform 2.0 (NT2.0). While not many details are available for now, NT2.0 is expected to be an autonomous driving technology.
Yet, investors are so excited to see Nio's sales rebound that they aren't paying much attention to anything else, and are buying the stock while it's still significantly below its highs.
