XPeng Stock Kicks Into To Top Gear After Q3 Beat, Positive Guidance: Retail Sentiment Soars

XPeng, Inc. ($XPEV) shares climbed over 5% in pre-market trading on Tuesday after the Guangzhou-based Chinese electric car maker reported a beat-and-raise quarter.

The company said its third-quarter non-GAAP loss per American Depository Share (ADS) was 1.62 yuan ($0.23), narrower than the year-ago’s 3.23 yuan, but wider than the preceding quarter’s 1.29 yuan.

Revenue climbed 18.4% year-over-year (YoY) and 24.5% sequentially to $1.44 billion, with vehicle sales fetching roughly 87% of the total. 

Third-quarter deliveries climbed 16.3% year-on-year (YoY) to 46,533 units. Sequentially, deliveries increased a steeper 54.05%.

The top- and bottom-line results exceeded the consensus that called for a loss of $0.30 per share and revenue of $1.41 billion.

Services and other revenue, which contributed about $0.19 billion, jumped 90.7% YoY due primarily to R&D services revenue related to the platform and software, as well as electrical/electronic architecture technical collaborations with Volkswagen AG ($VWAGY).

Gross margin improved YoY from a negative 2.7% to a record 15.3%, reflecting strong revenue growth and a 2.3% decrease in cost of sales.

Brian Gu, Vice Chairman and Co-President of XPeng, said, "Through technology-driven cost reductions and significant quarter-over-quarter volume growth, our gross margin reached historical high at 15.3%, achieving the fifth consecutive quarterly margin improvement."

As of Sept. 30, the company had cash, cash-equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investments and time deposits of $5.09 billion.

During the quarter, XPeng launched the MONA M03, its all-electric hatchback coupe. It officially unveiled its XPeng P7+ artificial intelligence-defined fastback sedan earlier this month.

Xiaopeng He, Chairman and CEO of XPeng said, "The successful launch of M03 and P7+ marks the beginning of a strong growth cycle underpinned by our major product cycles."

"I believe the next decade will be the era of AI. I am confident that I can lead XPENG to become a global AI auto company and accelerate the mass adoption of AI in mobility," he added.

Looking ahead, the company expects deliveries for the fourth quarter to be between 87,000 and 91,000, representing a YoY increase of 44.6%-51.3%. 

In October - the first month of the fourth quarter, the company delivered a record 23,917 EVs, comprising over 10,000 units of MONA MO3.

XPeng guided to fourth-quarter revenue of 15.3 billion yuan-16.1 billion yuan, up 17.2%-24.1%. This compares to the 14.9-billion-yuan consensus estimate, according to Yahoo Finance.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment surged to 'extremely bullish' (81/100) from ‘bullish’ a day ago, accompanied by an uptick in message volume to 'high.'

XPeng was within the top five trending stocks on Stockwits.

In premarket trading, as of 7:54 am ET, the NYSE-listed ADS of XPeng rose 5.30% to $13.70 following a 10.83% loss for the year-to-date period.

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