EHang has announced a date for the onsite Investor Day it promised in February in response to devastating allegations by activist short-seller Wolfpack Research.
Originally planned for “late June 2021,” the Investor Day will now take place on Aug. 18 at the eVTOL developer’s production facility in Yunfu city, Guangdong, China. Registration for the event is open through Aug. 2 on EHang’s website.
EHang reported that it commenced operations at its Yunfu plant last month “as scheduled.” The site, which “represents a scale-up of the company’s production capabilities,” has a total planned floor area of approximately 24,000 square meters (around 258,000 square feet) and includes a research and training center as well as manufacturing and assembly areas, EHang said.
EHang’s stock (Nasdaq: EH) dropped by more than 60 percent in February after Wolfpack released a report accusing the company of grossly misrepresenting its revenue, intellectual property, and progress in bringing its passenger drones to market.
Among other things, Wolfpack claimed that EHang founder Huazhi Hu misled investors in a December 2020 press release when he stated, “we have started to ramp up our production capacity with the new facility in Yunfu.” Wolfpack researchers who visited the Yunfu facility uninvited in January 2021 found it “far from any kind of production or manufacturing,” according to the short-seller’s report.
In a separate press release issued two days after the Wolfpack report, EHang clarified that it was still in the process of retrofitting the existing building on the site, and expected to start production of its autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs) in Yunfu in the second quarter of 2021.
EHang said the Yunfu plant will initially produce up to 600 of its EH216 “passenger-grade” AAVs per year, a capacity that “can be further increased to support the growing global market needs.” In its latest annual report, EHang claims to have sold 70 units of passenger-grade AAVs in 2020, up from 61 units in 2019.
Wolfpack has alleged that EHang’s relationship with its primary purported customer, Shanghai Kunxiang Intelligent Technology Co., is a “sham” benefitting Kunxiang’s own investment in EHang — claims that EHang has vigorously denied.
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