On the evening of July 9th, Beijing time, it was reported that NIO will receive over 10 billion credit lines from 6 banks. The credit can be referred to Tesla, which means that NIO can obtain low-interest loans from banks in the future, in order to support daily operations, even capacity building. However, the incident reversed later, and the official of NIO quickly dismissed the rumor, In response, Qin Lihong, co-founder of NIO, responded to a reporter from the Economic Observer, saying that “the acquisition of a strategic investment of 10 billion yuan from 6 major banks” is not accurate, please wait for the company’s news to release specific information tomorrow.
If this news is true and landed, this will become another large amount of capital that NIO obtains this year. On February 25 this year, NIO and Hefei City signed a cooperation framework agreement on NIO China HQ project. On April 29, the two parties signed a final agreement, and strategic investors in Hefei will invest 7 billion yuan in cash in NIO-China project. On June 29, NIO disclosed the latest progress, saying that NIO and strategic investors had completed the planned capital injection of 7.356 billion yuan from NIO China.
Continued funding sources will help NIO get out of the funding dilemma. According to NIO’s financial report, its total cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments at the end of the first quarter are only 2.4 billion, which is not enough to support the working capital and liquidity required for operation in the next year.
At the same time as Hefei’s strategic investment project progressed, the business performance after NIO got money has also improved. Data show that in June of this year, NIO delivered 3,740 units, setting a new monthly high, an increase of 179% year-on-year. NIO delivered 10,331 units in the second quarter, achieving tens of thousands of deliveries in a single quarter for the first time. As of the end of June, the cumulative number of NIO brand delivery exceeded 40,000.
At present, NIO has ES8 and ES6 for sale. Recently, NIO’s third mass-produced model, the NIO EC6 trial car, was rolled off the assembly line at the Hefei plant. According to NIO’s previous plan, the new car will be officially announced in July this year and is expected to start delivery in September. In terms of channels, as of July 7, NIO has opened 129 stores nationwide, and its sales network has covered 83 cities nationwide.