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Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg
News from the Chinese electric-car maker
Xpeng
that its vehicle deliveries in the third quarter were up 266% year over year is pushing the stock higher. That isn’t the only factor behind the gain.
Xpeng (ticker: XPEV) shares picked up their second Buy rating on Monday morning, this time from Bin Wang, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Credit Suisse. He now rates shares the equivalent of Buy and has a $21 price target for the stock.
J.P. Morgan analyst Nick Lai also rates Xpeng shares Buy. His price target is $27 a share, while the stock closed at $18.19 Friday. It was up 8.1% in premarket trading to $19.66.
In addition to his positive call on Xpeng, Wang also rates
NIO
(NIO) shares at Buy and has a $25 price target. He rates
Li Auto
(LI) stock Hold, with a $16 price target for that security. Xpeng, NIO, and Li Auto are three pure-play EV start-ups selling cars in China with stocks listed in the U.S.
Wang’s Buy is just the second rating for Xpeng shares. NIO has 17 analysts covering it, while Li has eight. Xpeng has fewer analysts because it is the newest of the three. Xpeng’s initial public offering was Aug. 26. It sold shares at $15 and the stock traded as high as $25.
The company’s relative newness might be why few analysts cover it. It also why it is difficult to interpret its delivery figures. There is limited history and few analyst estimates to use as a basis for comparison.
Still, the results look solid. Xpeng delivered 3,478 cars in September and 8,578 cars for the third quarter. Third-quarter deliveries rose 266% year over year. September deliveries grew 31% sequentially, compared with August 2020 and 145% compared with September 2019.
Xpeng’s delivery numbers indicate the Chinese EV market continues to be strong. Investors might have drawn a similar conclusion from NIO’s and Tesla’s (TSLA) deliveries, which were reported last week. NIO deliveries grew 156% year over year to 12,206 cars.
Tesla reported record quarterly deliveries at just under 140,000. Tesla doesn’t break out geographic sales in its initial delivery releases.
NIO and Tesla stock are up 426% and 396% year to date, respectively, far better than comparable returns of the
S&P 500
and
Dow Jones Industrial Average
or those of traditional auto makers. Li Auto shares closed at $16.92 Friday. The company sold shares at $11.50 in an IPO in July.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
