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Today's big stories

Chinese EV maker Xpeng reported better-than-expected quarterly results
Our analyst has looked into how to respond to inflation, war, and rising interest rates all at once – Read Now
US companies have announced a record amount of buybacks this year

Cautionary Tale

What’s Going On Here?

Xpeng reported better-than-expected quarterly results on Monday, but there might be a malfunction under the Chinese EV maker’s hood…

What Does This Mean?

Xpeng made a loss last quarter, sure, but that’s not exactly the whole story. The EV maker actually delivered over 40,000 vehicles last quarter – more than three times as many as the same time the year before. Its cars were so popular, in fact, that it was able to hike its prices without turning customers off, which helped the company offset some of the extra supply chain-related costs. Xpeng even managed to top $1 billion in revenue for the first time – triple what it made at the same time in 2020. Still, it’s not resting on its laurels: the EV maker said it’s planning to deliver more than twice as many cars this quarter, and it’ll be ramping up production this year too.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Goodwill runs out.
Xpeng still has one major problem to contend with: the price of lithium carbonate – a key ingredient in EV batteries – has jumped fivefold in the last year, and the war in Ukraine is bound to send its price higher still. EV makers like Xpeng, then, have just hiked their prices again to protect their profits – a move Morgan Stanley warns will hit demand sooner or later.

Zooming out: Tesla gets in on the stock split action.
Morgan Stanley’s less skeptical about Tesla, partly because the original EV maker has the heft to get the right suppliers on side. That might be why the investment bank is estimating that Tesla’s stock price will end up 30% higher than where it is now. It’s off to a good start: Tesla said on Monday that it’s planning to split its stock this year, and investors sent its shares up 5%.

You might also like: What investors are getting wrong about the EV market right now.

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Analyst Take

How To Deal With All Of This, All At Once

Reda, Analyst

What’s Going On Here?

This year has been a lot.

Just when we thought we were out of the frying pan of Covid, we’ve flopped gracelessly into the fire of another three predicaments.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has caused a commodity supply shock that’s pushed their prices to new highs, with Europe in particular left reeling from the damage.

Inflation rates are at multi-decade highs across most of the world, leaving us with three possible outcomes: one bearish, one bullish, and one base case scenario.

And central banks – chief among them the Federal Reserve – are scrambling to engineer “soft landings” for their economies.

So that’s today’s Insight: how to adapt your portfolio to three diverse problems, all at once.

Read or listen to the Insight here

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