NIO Stock Forecast: Nio Inc back below $40 despite major investment from Royal Dutch Shell

Update: NIO has opened Friday's market session with a 5% loss, following the wide-world stock market falls triggered by the new covid variant discovered in South Africa and subsequent travel restrictions that governments have started to implement. The stock is trading below the psychological $40 mark at the time of this update, before the start of a shortened US market session.

NYSE:NIO was a breakout stock in 2020 and after falling back to the low-single digits, shares are now firmly higher as the company has a market cap of $65 billion. But 2021 has not been an easy year for Nio after surging to an all-time high price of $66.99 earlier in the year. Shares of Nio are down 22% year-to-date so far, and 23% over the past 52-weeks. The company has lagged its closest domestic rivals XPeng (NYSE:XPEV) and Li Auto (NASDAQ:LI) which have gained 23% and 0.49% respectively year to date.

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A fairly large announcement from Nio on Thursday as the Chinese EV maker reached a partnership with global energy conglomerate Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A). The agreement will see the two companies create a global network of charging stations as well as Nio’s patented battery swap stations. The network will range across Asia and Europe to start, with future global expansion in the plans as well. The project will begin rollout at some point in 2022, and short-term expansion in China to 100 stations by 2025.

NIO stock price

All eyes in the electric vehicle sector will be on Nio rival Li Auto on Monday as the company is the last of the major Chinese EV makers to report its third-quarter earnings. XPeng and Nio both topped estimates for the quarter so Li Auto will be looking to make it a clean sweep. Li Auto has managed to continue to grow its monthly vehicle deliveries each month, with Li actually outpacing Nio in the third quarter of 2021.