The listing ceremony of Xpeng on HKEX on July 7, 2021 Photo: courtesy of Xpeng

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) firm XPeng Motors officially listed on the Hong Kong stock market on Wednesday, making it the first IPO of intelligent EV on Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd (HKEX).

Company executives said that Xpeng has confidence in sales in the second half of the year and will consider listing on the A-share market in the future. It has been listed on the US stock market in August 2020.

Stock price of Xpeng closed at HK$165.0 ($21.2) on Wednesday, which is also the offering price, after a maximum drop of 3.33 percent during the trading. The market capitalization stood at HK$279.12 billion. Major market index the Hang Seng Index closed 0.40 percent lower on the same day.

Unlike the more common "secondary listing," Xpeng's Hong Kong debut was a "dual-primary listing" with stricter regulatory standards, making it the only Chinese firm that completed primary listing on both Hong Kong and the US market within three years, according to a release from Xpeng sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

A company with a dual-primary listing should have primary listings on both the HKEX and an overseas exchange and shall comply with all the listing rules and requirements of HKEX and overseas exchange, read the Listing Rules of HKEX.

In the future, Xpeng can meet the conditions of Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, and A-share investors may be able to directly buy Xpeng's shares, said Brian Gu Hongdi, Vice Chairman and President of Xpeng.

"Xpeng focuses on intelligent functions such as auto-pilot, involving a large amount of data. Xpeng will always obey the data requirements of data security and national security. Adapting to supervision is a must for science and technology enterprises," said Gu on Wednesday during a press conference.

According to public information, Xpeng's IPO recorded the sale of 85 million shares of the company's class A common shares globally. 

He Xiaopeng, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Xpeng, expected that the penetration rate of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) in China will reach 30 percent by 2025, and it will reach 60 percent in the super first-tier cities due to emission restriction policies.

The company's existing factory has a designed capacity of about 100,000 vehicles, and the peak capacity can be increased to 500,000 vehicles if all factories operate in full swing, He said on Wednesday during a press conference after the listing ceremony.

By the end of June this year, Xpeng's cumulative deliveries in the first half of the year reached 30,738 units, which had exceeded its total deliveries in 2020. In June, the number of deliveries reached 6,565 units, up 617 percent year-on-year.