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XPeng reported quarterly results before the market opened on Friday morning.
Killai Shen/Bloomberg
Investors Could Use Some Good News From the Chinese Electric-Vehicle Maker XPeng when it reports fourth-quarter results on Friday morning. The company has been dealing with declining sales and falling stock price ever since.
Tesla
Earlier this year, it had cut the prices of its vehicles in China.
Wall Street is looking for a loss per share of about 16 cents on $950 million in sales for the fourth quarter of 2022. US-listed American Depository Receipts, or ADRs, have two
XPeng
Embedded shares in it. Analysts expect a loss of about 32 cents per ADR.
For the fourth quarter of 2021, XPeng posted a loss of 12 cents per share, or 24 cents per ADR, on sales of about $1.3 billion.
Both sales and unit deliveries are declining. XPeng delivered 22,204 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to 41,751 vehicles in the year-ago quarter.
XPeng delivered 11,228 vehicles in the first two months of 2023. According to Bloomberg, Wall Street is expecting sales of about 23,000 units in the first quarter, which means about 12,000 units in March. However, quarterly analyst estimates put about 8,000 units delivered for March at the low end of the current range gathered by Bloomberg.
The XPeng sold about 3,000 units in the first few weeks of March, according to data compiled by Citi analyst Jeff Chung.
Quarterly delivery guidance that indicates anything above 8,000 units for March will likely be taken as a positive by investors.
In recent months, sales of XPeng vehicles haven’t been as good as investors had expected. Competition is one reason. For example, XPeng has launched the G9 SUV in late 2022. The G9 starts at around $46,000, and it’s very similar to a
Tesla
(TSLA) Model Y. A base-level Model Y started the year costing around $43,000, then Tesla cut prices, and now the same Y starts at around $39,000.
XPeng cut the price of its small SUV, the G3i, in January after Tesla slashed prices in China.
management host a Conference Call ET to discuss the results. Investors and analysts will want to know more about the demand and price of the XPeng EV, along with the demand for EVs in China.
Coming into Thursday’s trading, XPeng stock was down about 19% and down 62% over the past 12 months. Shares are down about 89% from their all-time high of $74.49 in November 2020.
in comparison,
S&P 500
is up about 3% year to date and down about 9% over the last 12 months.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
It’s up about 3% so far this year and has fallen about 6% over the past 12 months.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]