An undisclosed hedge fund liquidated its entire XPeng Inc. (XPEV) position valued at $29.5 million according to a recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The exit marks a clean departure from the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer with no residual holdings reported.
The timing follows a difficult quarter for XPeng. The stock traded near $8.12 at last quarter-end, down 37% year-over-year, with delivery volumes missing analyst projections by 11% in Q3 2024. The hedge fund's position represented approximately 3.2 million shares at filing valuation. No partial trim preceded the exit—the fund held the position in the prior quarter and eliminated it entirely in this reporting period. The 13F disclosure timeline means the actual liquidation occurred between July and September 2024, a window that captured XPeng's guidance reset and margin compression warnings.
This matters because institutional conviction in Chinese EV plays is fracturing along new lines. The selloff isn't Tesla-versus-BYD positioning. It's a recalibration around which Chinese manufacturers can survive the 28% price war underway in domestic markets while scaling internationally. XPeng's October delivery report showed 23,917 units, a sequential improvement but still trailing NIO's 31,607 and Li Auto's 48,740. The fund's exit suggests skepticism that XPeng's autonomous driving IP and European expansion justify the $11.2 billion market capitalization against peers with broader product matrices.
The 13F filing cadence creates a four-month intelligence lag, but the signal remains relevant. Hedge funds filing this quarter are disclosing September 30 positions. Three dynamics matter for allocators tracking EV exposure: XPeng's Q4 guidance of 87,000 to 91,000 deliveries will print in January, showing whether the October bump sustained; European tariff implementations on Chinese-built EVs take effect in March 2025, directly impacting XPeng's export economics; and the company's $744 million cash burn in the first three quarters of 2024 suggests another capital raise by mid-2025 if delivery ramps stall.
Watch for XPeng's December delivery data in early January and the Q4 earnings call in late February. The company's commentary on European order backlog and margin outlook will clarify whether this hedge fund exit was early or merely punctual.