Citi believes investors should base pricing on 2025 sales expectations rather than current order momentum.
The Zhitong Finance App learned that Citibank released a research report saying that due to strong demand for Chinese cars in the fourth quarter as expected, market concerns include sales falling short of expectations until the first quarter of 2025, whether the trade-in policy will be postponed, and whether the price war will start again in the first half of 2025. Citi believes investors should base pricing on 2025 sales expectations rather than current order momentum. For stocks valued at market sales rates, if investor sentiment deteriorates, the average value below 0.8 times will have a certain downside risk.
Citi said that at the company level, they prefer BYD shares (01211) and Brilliance China (01114). For BYD/Geely Auto (00175) /Zero Sports Auto (09868), based on the current order volume trajectory, the bank expects a strong backlog of orders at the end of 2024, which can offset the low car sales season in early 2025 and support estimates before launching strong models until March and the 2nd quarter of 2025.
On the Geely side, the bank maintained a core profit estimate of 2.6 billion yuan for the 3rd quarter, but after accounting for other one-time projects (such as foreign exchange and provisions), the total profit is expected to reach 2.4 billion yuan. As for Xiaopeng Motor-W (09868), the bank believes that there is uncertainty about the length of the P7+ and MONA model cycle, and that the current strong model cycle may be reduced by the off-season of automobile sales in early 2025. In 2025, intelligent assisted driving systems (ADAS) will penetrate the market below 0.2 million yuan, posing a threat to Xiaopeng Motor, which has intelligent assisted driving systems as the core.