NIO hat die Chance, am Leben zu bleiben.

Finally, at the end of 2025, NIO achieved a quarterly profit. After eight years on the stock market and a cumulative loss of over 100 billion yuan, this Chinese electric vehicle company recorded a positive net profit for the first time in a single quarter.

On March 10, NIO released its annual and quarterly financial reports for the fourth quarter of 2025. The reports show that NIO achieved a net profit of 282.7 million yuan and an operating profit of 807.3 million yuan in this quarter. According to non - GAAP standards, the adjusted net profit in this quarter was 726.8 million yuan, and the adjusted operating profit was 1.2513 billion yuan.

NIO's annual and quarterly financial reports for the fourth quarter of 2025

Although NIO failed to achieve the goal of delivering over 50,000 vehicles per month last year, perhaps other good news is enough to cover up this flaw.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, NIO's sales, delivery volume, and overall gross profit margin all reached record highs. Both the gross margin for vehicles and the overall gross profit margin reached their highest levels in three years. The company achieved positive free cash flow for two consecutive quarters and positive operating cash flow throughout 2025.

After the release of the financial reports, NIO's stock price on the US stock market rose by 5% in pre - market trading yesterday (March 10) and closed with a 15.38% increase. Today (March 11), NIO's stock price on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange also closed with an increase of over 14%.

Li Bin couldn't hide his joy at the earnings conference. Last year, on various occasions, he repeatedly mentioned the goal of achieving a profit in the fourth quarter, and now he has finally fulfilled his promise. He explained that the company has now officially entered the third phase of its development and will start a new cycle of rapid growth. NIO's new operational goal is to achieve an annual profit according to non - GAAP standards in 2026.

The fact that an automobile company achieves a quarterly profit only after more than ten years of operation may not prove much. It only proves how poorly the company was operated in the past.

Many have cited the example of Tesla to argue - Tesla also took ten years to achieve its first quarterly profit. But Tesla was in a completely different development phase. When Tesla was founded in 2003, the electric vehicle market was still a utopia, while NIO was founded in 2014, when Tesla had already introduced the Model S and Model X and was already delivering in China.

Compared with its Chinese competitors in the electric vehicle market, NIO's best - ever financial report so far is not even that impressive. NIO's gross margin for vehicles reached 18.1% in this quarter, a level that Li Auto had already reached three or four years ago. Xiaomi achieved a vehicle gross margin of over 20% in the fourth quarter of 2024 after three years of automobile development.

But for NIO, which has been in the red for a long time, the first quarterly profit at least proves that it has the ability to survive in the market. It's not that losses are so terrible - especially considering that Li Bin may be the Chinese CEO best able to raise funds - but long - term losses affect the market's, customers', and the industry's confidence in NIO.

Li Bin explained in an interview with the media last year that the losses in the financial report would have various impacts, including on customer acquisition, personnel recruitment, and the supply chain. Therefore, it is important to prove at this time that the company can be profitable.

"The profit is not only for others, but we know it's time to prove ourselves." Li Bin said.

How did NIO achieve the quarterly profit?

NIO is one of the most loss - making Chinese electric vehicle companies. Since its listing eight years ago, NIO has recorded a cumulative operating loss of 104 billion yuan, an average of 13 billion yuan per year, which is about 35.61 million yuan per day. In 2023 and 2024, when the losses were the highest, NIO's annual loss was 22 billion yuan.

The media once compared NIO's money - burning rate with the gold price and said that the company burned more money per second than the gold price at that time, "Every second is as valuable as gold."

Although NIO's annual loss in 2025 reached the lowest level in the past four years, it still amounted to 14.041 billion yuan. This was also the case after NIO finally achieved a profit in the fourth quarter. If we only look at the first three quarters, NIO's cumulative operating loss was 14.849 billion yuan, an average of 5 billion yuan per quarter. In comparison, NIO's annual loss between 2020 and 2021 was only about 4 billion yuan.

So it's no wonder that Li Bin said internally in the middle of last year that when he first set the goal of achieving a profit in the fourth quarter, the number of people who believed in this goal was probably less than 1% - Li Bin mentioned the goal of achieving a profit in the fourth quarter in the first quarter of last year, when NIO recorded a record quarterly loss, lost 6.4 billion yuan per quarter, and only sold 42,000 vehicles, which was almost a life - or - death situation.

But why did NIO miraculously recover after three quarters? Last year, NIO's quarterly operating loss gradually decreased, from 6.4 billion yuan, 4.9 billion yuan to 3.5 billion yuan, and finally achieved an operating profit of 800 million yuan in the fourth quarter, which suddenly changed the negative voices from the outside world.

An improvement in the sales structure was one factor. In recent years, the majority of NIO's sales almost exclusively came from the 5566 models. In 2023, the 5566 models, including NIO ET5/5T and NIO ES6/EC6, accounted for about 90% of NIO's total annual sales. However, the sales volume of NIO's high - end models such as the ES8 could never achieve a breakthrough. NIO's second brand, LeDao L60, which was highly anticipated, was also a failure, which directly led to the dismissal of Ai Tiecheng.

The change occurred after the launch of the LeDao L90 and the new NIO ES8. Both abandoned NIO's previous high - end strategy and began to focus on cost - performance, which reversed NIO's sales volume in the second half of the year.

The LeDao L90 was launched at a price of 265,800 yuan, and the purchase price under the battery rental model is less than 200,000 yuan, which suddenly reversed LeDao's weak sales volume. The new NIO ES8, which was introduced in September, continues to follow the strategy of "more performance, same price". The minimum price has dropped by about 100,000 yuan compared with the previous model, and the purchase price under the battery rental model is 300,000 yuan.

Last year, NIO delivered a total of 326,028 vehicles, a year - on - year increase of 46.9%, setting a record. In the fourth quarter, the vehicle delivery volume was 124,807 vehicles, a year - on - year increase of 71.7%.

NIO's monthly delivery volume statistics

The NIO ES8 has contributed a lot and achieved the goal of 70,000 delivered vehicles only 160 days after its launch. According to data from the China Automobile Dealers Association, the NIO ES8 won the sales championship in the segment of large SUVs and vehicles over 400,000 yuan for three consecutive months (from December last year to February this year). The LeDao L90 also had good sales, and NIO named it the sales champion of pure - electric SUVs in 2025.

Driven by the high - end models, NIO achieved vehicle sales of 31.606 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of last year, a year - on - year increase of 80.9%. The gross profit in this quarter increased by 163.1% year - on - year to 6.074 billion yuan, and the gross margin for vehicles also reached a three - year record of 18.1%, compared with only 13.1% last year.

NIO's annual and quarterly financial reports for the fourth quarter of 2025

While increasing sales, NIO also significantly cut costs and expenses. At the beginning of last year, Li Bin proposed an organizational reform called the CBU mechanism (Basic Business Unit) internally and promoted cost - reduction and efficiency - improvement. At that time, 36Kr referred to a statement from an employee close to NIO's management and said that "the new mechanism requires that every yuan - euro input gets a response."

This is reflected in the financial report. In the first three quarters of last year, NIO's research and development expenses were continuously reduced. In the first half of the year, the quarterly research and development expenses were still at the level of 3 billion yuan, reduced to 2.39 billion yuan in the third quarter, and further reduced to 2.026 billion yuan in the fourth quarter. The sales, general, and administrative expenses also continuously decreased, from 4.4 billion yuan at the beginning of the year to 3.537 billion yuan at the end of the year.

Through these two measures, NIO finally achieved an operating profit of 800 million yuan in the fourth quarter of last year and achieved a quarterly profit for the first time since its listing.

A temporary glimmer of hope

The first quarterly profit does not mean that NIO's profitability is already stable. Even Tesla, which achieved its first quarterly profit in 2013, has fallen back into losses several times.

In the highly competitive electric vehicle market, the quality of a model can save a company's business results or cause a major setback.

Before 2024, Li Auto was once the sales champion among new - energy vehicle manufacturers in the Chinese electric vehicle market. But with the failure of the Li MEGA and the subsequent pure - electric models, Li Auto has not achieved growth. In 2025, the annual sales volume was only 406,000 vehicles, a year - on - year decrease of about 19%.

At the earnings conference, analysts were particularly interested in NIO's future sales growth and gross margin and were worried about whether NIO could continue the growth rate of the fourth quarter of last year. They also had doubts about NIO's cost control - the profit in the fourth quarter of last year was simply too unusual for NIO.

Li Bin explained that he is very confident that sales growth will increase by 40% to 50% in 2026. His confidence comes from the launch of large SUV models. A total of five large SUV models will be on the market this year. Apart from the NIO ES9, which is positioned as the administrative flagship, a large five - seater SUV based on the ES8 platform will be launched in the third quarter, and the LeDao L80 will be launched in the second quarter to fully cover the premium segment of large SUVs. Large SUVs can generate more sales and profits and have higher risk resistance.

However, these models will be launched one after another after the second quarter. In the first quarter of this year, NIO's sales volume has dropped to 20,000 vehicles per month. NIO has predicted a sales volume of 80,000 to 83,000 vehicles for the first quarter in the financial report. Given that NIO has delivered a total of 47,979 vehicles in the first two months, NIO's delivery volume in March is approximately between 32,000 and 35,000 vehicles, which is slightly lower than market expectations.

But NIO's sales forecast is slightly higher than expected, and the market believes that this is mainly driven by the high - end model ES8. NIO's CFO Qu Yu explained at the earnings conference that due to the high proportion of ES8 delivery volume in the first quarter, they expect the gross margin and the gross margin for vehicles in the first quarter of this year to be at the level of... (incomplete sentence in the original text)