NIO made a profit, its stock price rose, and Li Bin smiled.
Yesterday, NIO released its financial report for the fourth quarter and the whole year of 2025. Its revenue, deliveries, and gross profit all reached new highs. The most crucial information is that after 11 years of losses, NIO has finally entered the profit-making stage.
It achieved profitability in the fourth quarter, and the adjusted operating profit reached 1.25 billion yuan.
Not only in terms of the adjusted operating profit statistical caliber, NIO's operating profit in the fourth quarter reached 800 million yuan, and the net profit reached 280 million yuan. No matter from which statistical caliber, NIO has firmly achieved the goal of turning losses into profits in the fourth quarter.
NIO's stock price also started to soar very spontaneously. It soared all the way at the opening today. As of press time, NIO's stock price soared 13.32% to HK$43.33, and the total market value exceeded 100 billion, reaching HK$106.5 billion.
Not only users and shareholders are happy, but also Li Bin. In order to encourage him to lead NIO to continue to make better profits, NIO's directors will also grant Li Bin 248 million restricted shares.
If estimated according to NIO's latest closing price of HK$43.33 in the Hong Kong stock market, these shares are worth more than HK$10.7 billion. Li Bin's hard work has finally paid off.
Profitability Is Not by Chance
Let's first see how NIO achieved profitability in the fourth quarter.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, NIO's revenue was 34.6502 billion yuan, an increase of 14.9468 billion yuan compared with 19.7034 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 75.9% and a sequential increase of 59%.
In terms of delivery volume, NIO delivered 124,800 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2025, an increase of 52,100 vehicles compared with 72,700 vehicles in the same period of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 71.7%, a solid new high in history.
The significant increase in gross profit margin has become the key for NIO to achieve profitability. In the fourth quarter of 2025, NIO's comprehensive gross profit margin was 17.5%, compared with 11.7% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 13.9% in the third quarter of 2025, showing both year-on-year and sequential increases.
Breaking it down to the most core vehicle gross profit margin, the vehicle gross profit margin in the fourth quarter was as high as 18.1%, a year-on-year increase of 5 percentage points. Obviously, this is due to the hot sales of the new NIO ES8, which has significantly improved the sales structure. The new ES8, which started delivery on September 21 last year, delivered 22,256 units in December.
This also enabled NIO's operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2025 to reach 807.3 million yuan, and the adjusted operating profit (non-GAAP) was 1.2513 billion yuan. Even the most difficult-to-achieve net profit reached 282.7 million yuan, compared with a loss of 7.1115 billion yuan in the same period last year.
From the perspective of the whole year of 2025, NIO's financial data is also good. Last year, NIO delivered a total of 326,028 new vehicles, an increase of 114,000 vehicles compared with 212,000 vehicles in the whole year of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 46.9%, a new high in history. The most direct effect of the sales growth is the increase in revenue. The annual revenue in 2025 was 87.49 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.1%, also a new high in history.
In addition, the total annual gross profit reached 11.92 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 83.5%. The annual comprehensive gross profit margin was 13.6%, and the vehicle gross profit margin was 14.6%, respectively reaching new highs since 2022.
Of course, NIO was still in a loss state in the whole year of 2025, with a net loss of 14.9426 billion yuan. However, compared with the 22.4017 billion yuan in the whole year of 2024, it decreased by 7.4591 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year narrowing of 33.3%.
In addition, NIO's ability to achieve profitability in the fourth quarter is not entirely due to the significant increase in sales volume and gross profit margin. There is also support from cost-saving measures behind it.
For example, the R & D expenses were reduced from 3.635 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 2.026 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 44.3% and a sequential decrease of 15.3%. NIO's annual R & D expenses in 2025 were 10.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 18.7%.
NIO explained that the decrease in R & D expenses is mainly due to the decrease in the personnel costs of R & D functional departments brought about by organizational optimization, as well as the decrease in design and development expenses brought about by different development stages of new products and technologies.
In addition, in terms of operating expenses, NIO has become significantly more cautious in spending money. The sales and general administrative expenses were reduced from 4.877 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 3.537 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 27.5% and a sequential decrease of 15.5%.
NIO also stated in its financial report that the year-on-year and sequential decrease in sales, general, and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter is due to the decrease in the personnel and related costs of marketing and other support functions brought about by organizational optimization, as well as the reduction in sales and marketing activities. This also shows that the CBU mechanism implemented by NIO since 2025 is continuously playing a role in the overall business situation.
At the same time, there is an unobtrusive but crucial detail. NIO's accounts payable increased from 39.5 billion yuan in the third quarter to 53.3 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, directly increasing by more than 10 billion yuan in accounts payable.
Actually, in July last year, Li Bin had already given a formula for NIO's profitability. The total monthly sales of the three brands should reach more than 50,000 units, the gross profit margin should be controlled at 17% - 18%, the sales and management expense ratio should be about 10%, and the R & D expense ratio should be 6% - 7%.
In this regard, NIO has achieved a comprehensive gross profit margin of 17.5%. The sales, general, and administrative expenses are 3.537 billion yuan, accounting for only 10.2% of the revenue. The R & D expenses of 2.026 billion yuan also account for only 5.8% of the revenue. However, in terms of sales volume, there is a gap of about 25,000 units from the quarterly total sales of 150,000 units.
However, with most of the hard indicators achieved and the implementation of cost-cutting measures, profitability has become an inevitable result.
Striving for Annual Profitability
After achieving its first profit, NIO's primary consideration next is how to maintain continuous profitability.
On the one hand, it is to motivate the "leader". NIO's board of directors has approved the 2026 share incentive plan and approved the grant of approximately 248 million restricted shares of the company to Li Bin. This figure is equivalent to 10% of NIO's total outstanding shares as of February 28 this year.
The compensation plan of nearly 250 million shares will be divided into ten parts, with each part corresponding to a milestone. During Li Bin's continuous tenure as the CEO/Chairman of the Board/Management position recognized by the board of directors, every time NIO achieves one of the small goals in the US stock market, 10% of the compensation plan will be fulfilled.
The goals are divided into two categories. One is that when NIO's market value in the US stock market exceeds US$30 billion/US$50 billion/US$80 billion/US$100 billion/US$120 billion respectively, one-tenth of the above shares will belong to Li Bin. The other is that when NIO achieves an annual net profit of US$1.5 billion/US$2.5 billion/US$4 billion/US$5 billion/US$6 billion respectively, one-tenth of the shares will also belong to Li Bin.
Finally, if NIO grows into a company with a market value of US$120 billion and an annual net profit of US$6 billion, Li Bin will be granted all the shares in the compensation plan. Calculated according to the market value at that time and assuming that the total number of outstanding shares of NIO in the US stock market remains unchanged, the estimated value of Li Bin's bonus shares will reach US$12 billion, approximately equivalent to 82.3 billion yuan.
With such a sky-high bonus as motivation, Brother Bin will work even harder. Indeed, in the earnings conference call after the release of the financial report, Li Bin also announced the goal for 2026 - to achieve Non-GAAP profitability for the whole year of 2026 and a vehicle gross profit margin of 20%.
Li Bin also said in the meeting that he is very confident about the annual growth because this year will be a year of great success for NIO's large vehicles.
The most core one is, of course, the new flagship SUV model ES9. Li Bin revealed that it will be launched in the second quarter this year. A technology press conference will be held on April 9th. In addition, a large five-seater SUV based on the ES8 platform will be launched in the third quarter. Although the specific model name has not been revealed, it is very likely to be the new generation of ES7.
Finally, there is also a large SUV, the LeDao L80, which will also be launched in the second quarter. Previously, Shen Fei said in a live broadcast that it is a "dual-cabin super large five-seater SUV".
If we add the lidar version of the L90, NIO will have a total of five large vehicles on sale this year, covering the high-end mid-large/large SUV segment at the same time, and will become the main force in sales this year.
Based on the product structure mainly consisting of large vehicles, Li Bin said that he is very confident about a 40% to 50% sales growth this year. Estimated based on the 326,000 units delivered in 2025, the goal for 2026 will be to strive for 450,000 - 500,000 units.
In addition, CFO Qu Yu also mentioned that large vehicles have relatively high gross profit and stronger risk resistance, and she is confident to keep the annual gross profit at a reasonable level.
Moreover, NIO will continue to cut costs. Qu Yu said that the company will maintain a quarterly R & D investment of 2 billion to 2.5 billion yuan in 2026, and will continue to improve R & D efficiency based on the CBU operating mechanism, avoid ineffective investment, and improve R & D output with the same investment.
Although the amount of R & D investment has decreased, it has not affected the R & D results. Li Bin said in the earnings call that the second intelligent chip of Shenji Company, which is targeted at a wider range of customers, has been successfully taped out and is currently in the mass production process. It is still built based on the 5-nanometer automotive-grade process and has been successfully taped out, but its performance is slightly lower than that of the NX9031.
In Li Bin's words, it is probably at the level of three Orin X chips, but the cost will be lower. It is also a very good edge-side inference chip and has very wide applications in the field of embodied robots. Many industry customers have shown great interest and are in the early testing and contact stage.
