China’s Nio may be facing the same issues as Tesla, according to analysts

Shares of Nio Inc., dubbed “the Chinese Tesla,” have rallied this week despite one of the first Wall Street analyst takes, which listed plenty of concerns about the Shanghai-based electric-car maker.

Analysts at Bernstein rated Nio NIO, -8.92%  stock their equivalent of sell, saying that while many things “intrigue” them about the car maker, they are “unconvinced Nio’s shares represent a sound investment.”

They set a price target of $4.20 on Nio’s American depositary receipts, which would represent a 65% downside to Thursday close.

Nio’s ADRs jumped 75% on Thursday to settle at $11.60, a day after their debut on the New York Stock Exchange. They were down 6% on Friday, trading as low as $9.22.

Nio priced its initial public offering late Tuesday at $6.25, the low end of its expected range, to raise about $1 billion, and traded as low as $5.35 Wednesday before recouping losses to end at $6.60.

A few of Bernstein’s arguments would be familiar to those investors following Tesla Inc. TSLA, +1.40% which Nio is seen as potential rival in China: Nio’s cash burn, potential inability to reach “ambitious” volume targets, said the Bernstein analysts, led by Robin Zhu.

Moreover, there’s some evidence pointing to falling reservations numbers for Nio’s electric vehicles, they said.

“Longer term, we question whether the premium EV segment will be big enough to support Nio’s volume ambitions,” the analysts said. They projected the company to sell 50,000 vehicles by 2020 and 160,000 vehicles by 2025.

Nio eventually will get over its manufacturing challenges, only to face a distribution challenge, the Bernstein analysts said.

Nio “will only be selling to a small part of the Chinese market” due to the concentration of EV demand in top cities with license-plate restrictions, plus the company’s lack of distribution scale, they said.

Nio plans to have 12 store locations by year-end, but that’s a third of Tesla’s, which sold 17,800 cars last year in China.

The Bernstein analysts also said they expect Nio to tap capital markets in the next 12 to 18 months as its costs are “too high and its price points too low,” they said. Nio’s expenses are rising rapidly, and the company likely will remain a loss-making one through 2025, they said.

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