American depositary receipts of Chinese electric-vehicle maker XPeng has had a rough ride lately. Butrecent declinesare an opportunity according to one analyst who says Buy the ADRs now.
Daiwa analyst Kelvin Lau double-upgraded Xpeng (ticker: XPEV) to Buy from Sell Tuesday. Typically, analysts move one notch at a time going, for instance, from Sell to Hold and then to Buy.
Despite the much more bullish take, Lau barely had to move hisprice target. It went to $34 from $32, up only about 6%. The reason for his call appears to be more about recent market action than aboutcompany-specificdevelopments.
Coming into Tuesday, XPeng ADRs were down about 23% over the past two weeks, for a year-to-date loss of 35%. The market hasn’t been kind to EV investors lately.Tesla (TSLA) stock was also down more than 20% over the past two weeks, coming into Tuesday trading.
One reason for recent declines is that XPeng, and other Chinese EV makers, delivered fewer cars in February than in January, spooking investors. But February is the time of the Lunar New Year holiday, when sales of big-ticket items is often put on hold.XPeng managementtellsBarron’sthere is a two-week period in the month where it is essentially impossible to register a new car, as purchasing stops.
The bigger factor than deliveries, however, is fear of inflation. Higher inflation means higher interest rates, which are problematic for richly valued, high-growth stocks in two ways. First, a rise in rates makes funding growth more expensive. Second, high-growth companies generate most of their cash flow and potential dividends far in the future. That cash flow is relatively less attractive as investors can earn more interest right now.
XPeng ADRs qualify as high-growth shares. Analysts expect sales to grow roughly 150% year over year in 2021.
The upgrade is good news, but inflation fears will continue to affect XPeng ADRs for a while. That makes Wednesday’s inflation data a little higher stakes than usual. Economists expect prices—excluding food and energy—to be 0.2% higher in February compared with January. (Economists focus on inflation excluding food and energy to avoid commodity-price swings in the numbers.)
XPeng ADRs are up about 11% on Tuesday. The upgrade helps. So does the bounce in tech stocks. The Nasdaq Composite,home to many high-growth stocks, is up 3%, bouncing back after its recent selloff. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Averageare up about 1% and 0.1%, respectively.
With the upgrade, about 85% of analysts covering XPeng ADRs rate them at Buy. About 75% of analysts coveringLi Auto(LI), for comparison, rate those ADRs at Buy. More than 60% rateNIO(NIO)ADRs at Buy, which is theaverageBuy-rating ratio for stocks in the Dow.
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