NIO Reports Solid Q4 Deliveries: Already Outperforming Tesla?

NIO Reports Solid Q4 Deliveries: Already Outperforming Tesla? ## NIO Today, Chinese electric carmaker NIO (NIO) announced its December vehicle deliveries and production data. The company crushed its fourth-quarter deliveries guidance of 6,700–7,000 units, delivering 7,980 cars. Let’s take a closer look. ## NIO’s December car deliveries data In December, the company delivered about 3,318 units of its seven-seater ES8 SUV, up about 7.4% from November, when it delivered 3,089 units—a solid 96.4% increase from 1,573 in October. In a press release, NIO’s CFO Louis T. Hsieh said, “We are pleased with the solid ramp-up in production and delivery in 2018, which demonstrated our execution capabilities.” ## NIO ES6 NIO launched its highly anticipated five-seater SUV- ES6 on December 15 at an event in Shanghai. It started taking priority pre-orders for the ES6 on December 1, limited to ES8 owners and their friends and requiring an invitation. The company started taking pre-orders without an invitation on December 15. We might expect the company to hint toward its ES6 pre-orders when it releases its fourth quarter of 2018 results in the first half of February. In its initial years, Tesla (TSLA) missed its quarterly car deliveries (XLY) guidance many times, which raised concerns about weak execution. In this respect, NIO seems to have already gone beyond the worries that Tesla faced initially. As of January 9, NIO, Tesla, Alibaba (BABA), and Baidu (BIDU) were up 4.1%, 1.7%, 10.8%, and 5.1%, respectively, month-to-date. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 benchmark and NASDAQ Composite Index have risen 3.1% and 4.8%, respectively, in January so far.