We Believe NIO Plays Valeant-esque Accounting Games to Inflate
Revenue and Boost Net Income Margins to Meet Targets
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• Today, we reveal what we consider an audacious scheme by NYSE-listed NIO. Reminiscent of the
Philidor-Valeant relationship, NIO is likely using an unconsolidated related party to exaggerate
revenue and profitability.
• Presumably, with these stellar operating results in mind, retail investors have bid NIO’s shares up
>450% since 2020, making it one of China’s most valuable EV companies.
• Allow us to introduce you to Wuhan Weineng (“Weineng”), the convenient difference-maker helping
NIO exceed lofty growth and profitability estimates on The Street. Despite being formed by NIO and
a consortium of investors in late 2020, this unconsolidated related party has already generated
billions in revenue for NIO.
• While this rapid growth is impressive on the surface, our investigation has found Weineng might be
to NIO what Philidor was to Valeant. Just as Philidor aided Valeant in habitually making numbers,
NIO has curiously exceeded estimates since establishing Weineng.
• We believe sales to Weineng have inflated NIO’s revenue and net income by ~10% and 95%,
respectively. Specifically, we find that at least 60% of its FY2021 earnings beat seems attributable
to Weineng.
• By transferring the burden of collecting monthly subscriptions to Weineng, NIO has accelerated its
revenue growth. Instead of recognizing revenue over the life of the subscription (~7 years), Weineng
allows NIO to recognize revenue from the batteries they sell immediately. Through this
arrangement, we think NIO has juiced its numbers by pulling forward 7 years of revenue.
• Considering Weineng’s recent disclosure of 19,000 battery subscriptions, we questioned why
Weineng held 40,053 batteries as inventory on September 30, 2021. After careful investigation, we
believe NIO flooded Weineng with up to extra 21,053 batteries (worth ~1,147M RMB) to boost its
numbers. For Q4 2021, this number only gets worse and we estimate NIO oversupplied up to
another 15,200 batteries. The effect of this action on NIO’s bottom line is enormous.
• Of course, it would take a willing potential accomplice to pull off such a scheme… While NIO
represents limited control over Weineng, we identified notable conflicts of interest between the
two parties: Weineng’s top two executives currently double as NIO’s Vice President and Battery
Operating Executive Manager.
• NIO’s Chairman and CEO, Bin Li, is closely tied to Joy Capital and Erhai Liu, parties central to the
Luckin Coffee Fraud. While he has been hailed as the “Elon Musk of China”, Li’s past ventures have
seen their stocks collapse and been taken private at a fraction of their peak valuations.
• In January 2019, Bin Li transferred 50M shares to the “NIO Users Trust”, an opaque BVI entity
purportedly established to provide NIO Users with more influence over the Company’s governance.
In an apparent violation of these “Users” trust, Li pledged these shares to UBS to secure a personal
loan. With NIO’s stock declining 50+% since the pledge, we believe shareholders are unknowingly
exposed to the risk of a margin call against the Users Trust shares.