Why doesn't NIO, which has been profitable for three consecutive quarters, develop humanoid robots?

NIO, which just released its Q2 financial report, is experiencing a mismatch between strong performance and weak stock price.

On the one hand, from the performance perspective, NIO achieved a year-on-year revenue growth of as high as 69.1% in Q2, gross profit also increased by 211.3% year on year, and vehicle delivery volume rose by 49.4% year on year — more importantly, NIO has been profitable for three consecutive quarters.

But on the other hand, NIO's stock price continues to face downward pressure.

In fact, on September 1, the day the Q2 financial report was released, NIO's Hong Kong stock price once fell 10% during intraday trading, and the decline narrowed to 6.39% at market close. The next day, following the release of the Q2 earnings report, NIO's Hong Kong stock price dropped by 3.35% again — and by September 3, it had fallen by another 1.07%.

This clearly shows the capital market's attitude towards this performance report card.

However, for the development of NIO's own business, the real issue worth paying attention to is: under such a severe external market competition environment, how NIO can go through the cycle in the coming months and years.

Pressure Remains Behind Quarterly Profitability

Compared with last year, NIO's performance report can be fully described as "stunning".

Data shows that NIO's total revenue in Q2 was 32.1369 billion yuan, up 69.1% year on year. The gross profit in Q2 was 5.9065 billion yuan, up 211.3% year on year. The gross margin and automotive gross margin in Q2 were 18.4% and 18.5% respectively, compared with 10% and 10.3% in the same period last year.

Judging from this overall data, NIO's overall business support capability has seen a marked improvement.

Looking at the profit performance, NIO's operating loss in Q2 was 347.2 million yuan, compared with an operating loss of 4.9089 billion yuan in the same period last year, showing a significant improvement. Excluding share-based payment expenses, the adjusted operating profit in Q2 was 206.9 million yuan.

From the perspective of net profit, NIO's net loss in Q2 was 528 million yuan, compared with 4.9948 billion yuan in the same period last year; excluding share-based payment expenses, NIO's adjusted net profit in Q2 was 26.1 million yuan, in contrast to a net loss of 4.1267 billion yuan in the same period last year.

Overall, although the profit is modest, NIO has basically achieved self-sustainability in Q2, and its commercial closed-loop capability has been verified once again.

However, compared with the performance in Q1, this financial report still has some imperfections.

For example, compared with Q1, NIO's revenue and gross profit increased by 25.9% and 21.6% respectively; but as the overall business scale expanded, NIO's gross margin and automotive gross margin both saw a slight decline compared with Q1 (19% and 18.8% respectively).

In addition, in terms of net profit, NIO's adjusted net profit in Q1 was 43.5 million yuan, and that in Q2 was 26.1 million yuan, a quarter-on-quarter decline — which means that with the overall revenue scale expanded, the net profit performance in Q2 declined compared with Q1 instead.

Then why are NIO's gross profit and net profit performance in Q2 worse than that in the first quarter?

According to the financial report, NIO's R&D expenses in Q2 increased by 13.8% quarter on quarter compared with Q1. NIO stated that this is due to the increase in design and development expenses brought by new products and new technologies, as well as the rise in costs of R&D personnel.

In addition, NIO's sales, general and administrative expenses in Q2 also increased by 26.5% quarter on quarter, the core reason of which is the increase in sales and revenue-related expenses for NIO's new products. Judging from the dynamics in Q2, NIO did launch multiple new car models, which led to the increase in sales and marketing expenses.

Besides, according to NIO's statement in the earnings call, the cost pressure this year is relatively high. Starting from March, the costs of memory, bulk materials and batteries have all risen, and the cost per vehicle in Q2 increased by 14,000 yuan compared with last year. This also brought certain pressure to NIO's gross margin in Q2.

To this end, NIO has done a lot of work in Q2 to stabilize gross profit, including measures such as supply chain optimization and business negotiation on the cost side, which finally maintained the price stability of the three brands, and achieved an overall vehicle gross margin of 18.5%.

One piece of good news is that NIO achieved positive cash flow from operating activities in Q2 2026 — furthermore, as of June 30, 2026, NIO's cash reserves increased from 48.2 billion yuan at the end of Q1 to 56.7 billion yuan. NIO stated in the financial report that its cash reserves will be sufficient to support its continuous operation of daily activities in the next 12 months.

Therefore, for NIO today, the core contradiction is not the operational sustainability issue that people worried about last year, but how to better improve operational quality.

Product System Is Gradually Perfected, Maintaining Gross Margin Is the Key

The logic behind NIO's achievements in Q2 lies in the reconstruction and improvement of its product system.

In Q2, NIO delivered a total of 107,658 vehicles, of which the delivery volumes of the three brands NIO, Onvo and Firefly were 60,945, 29,124 and 17,589 respectively, accounting for 56.6%, 27.1% and 16.3% respectively.

For comparison, the sales volumes of the three brands in Q1 were 58,543, 13,339 and 11,583 respectively, accounting for 70.1%, 16.0% and 13.9% respectively. It can be seen that in Q2, the NIO brand maintained its sales momentum; the Onvo brand achieved a year-on-year increase of over 100%; the Firefly brand also achieved a sales growth of over 50%.

Judging from the sales proportion of the three brands, the structure in Q2 is more reasonable than that in Q1, but there is still a big gap from the company's original expectation (3:6:1).

If split apart, the performance of the NIO brand in Q2 mainly relies on the sales support of the two large models ES8 and ES9, which helped the NIO brand rank first in China's passenger car market above 350,000 yuan in Q2.

Among them, the performance of NIO ES8 is even more outstanding. On the basis of contributing to the sales volume in Q2, it achieved a delivery volume of 140,000 units in August. Li Bin emphasized in the earnings call that the 150,000th unit of ES8 will be delivered in September. Regarding ES9, Li Bin revealed that currently three quarters of ES9's customer groups come from outside the NIO community, and the cross-circle effect is very obvious.

Regarding the Firefly brand, Li Bin stated at the earnings call that this brand only has one model, and of course the special editions and subsequent technical iterations will continue — in general, Firefly is somewhat like iPhone, and new special editions will be launched continuously.

By comparison, the performance of the Onvo brand has become the focus of public attention.

Judging from the results, the Onvo L90 exceeded 60,000 deliveries after its refresh, and it also helped the Onvo brand rank first among large SUVs with transaction price below 300,000 yuan together with the L80; after the refresh and upgrade, the Onvo L60 also provided strong support for the overall sales of Onvo — but obviously, the support is not strong enough yet.

In response to this, Li Bin stated at the earnings call that the competition in the market where the Onvo brand is located is indeed much fiercer than that of NIO and Firefly, with more brands and more models; at present, the main challenge for the Onvo brand is still brand awareness, and the current brand awareness of Onvo is equivalent to that of the NIO brand five or six years ago.

Then how should the Onvo brand break through next?

In response, Li Bin said that in the next step, more, more active and more proactive methods will be adopted, through cross-border cooperation, offline activities, in-depth exploration of communities and other ways, to let more people get in touch with the Onvo brand; at the same time, in terms of channel construction, accelerate the layout of Sky stores shared by the three brands NIO, Onvo and Firefly, and continuously strengthen the construction of sales network, so that the Onvo brand can reach more family user groups in third- and fourth-tier cities.

In addition, Li Bin also emphasized that the Onvo brand will continue to launch new products to serve a wider range of family user groups, but the Onvo brand will maintain its positioning as a high-quality family vehicle brand, will not enter the overly low-end market, and will balance the relationship between volume and gross profit — Li Bin also added that the Onvo brand will launch strategic new products next year to further enrich the product line.

It is worth mentioning that NIO's management also emphasized at the earnings call that the risk of further rise in material costs in the second half of the year still exists, and it is expected that the cost per vehicle may increase by 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, but the company will continue to take corresponding measures. The overall goal is to maintain the vehicle gross margin in Q3 and Q4 at a level similar to that in Q2.

Apart From New Cars, What Other Cards Does NIO Have?

For NIO in 2026, the launch of new cars has come to an end, and sales have become the top priority. But beyond products, NIO still has a lot of systematic work in progress.

One of the key points is battery swapping.

At the earnings call, NIO stated that this year's target is still 1,000 battery swapping stations. However, different from before, since the launch of the Battery Swapping Partner Program in 2024, considerable progress has been made this year, and NIO has cooperated with more than 40 local state-owned enterprises and financial institutions in 25 provinces and cities across the country. NIO emphasized that as it stands, the full-year construction target of the charging and swapping network is fully funded by partners.

From this perspective, at least in the construction and operation of battery swapping stations, NIO is breaking away from the previous heavy asset model and adopting a light asset operation model.

In terms of the cost and operation of battery swapping stations, NIO CFO Qu Yu emphasized that the construction cost of the fifth-generation battery swapping station is 1.4 million yuan per station, which is significantly lower than the 1.5 million yuan of the previous generation, and the first-time battery swapping success rate has increased by 50% compared with the same period of the previous generation.

In terms of external cooperation, NIO stated that some landing projects and negotiations are still ongoing, and the continuously advancing Robotaxi is a highly compatible infrastructure support for battery swapping — in terms of cooperation and charging framework, the access fee model will basically be adopted.

Qu Yu also emphasized that more and more automakers have realized the advantages of battery swapping and hope to join in.

In general, for the battery swapping business, NIO is promoting the expansion of the battery swapping network, while also working on cost reduction and value realization — as it stands, this is still a complex process that requires more time.

In addition to the battery swapping business, NIO is also making certain progress in intelligentization. In the financial report, NIO disclosed that the shares of its subsidiary Shenji have been subscribed by investors, with a post-investment valuation of 12.25 billion yuan, and a subsidiary of NIO will hold a 59.95% controlling stake in Shenji.

It is worth mentioning that at the earnings call, Li Bin also revealed that currently the intelligent driving subscription ratio for users of NIO and Onvo's used cars is close to 20%. The current paying user base is still small, and there have been tens of millions of yuan in subscription revenue this year. As the user base grows, it is believed that subscription revenue will become a very important service income for the company in the long run.

At present, although this income is still relatively limited, it is indeed good news, indicating that NIO's investment in intelligentization will have new space for value realization.

It is worth mentioning that at the earnings call, NIO was also asked about the issue of "Ren Shaoqing establishing an embodied intelligence startup". Li Bin confirmed this and stated that Ren Shaoqing still serves as the head of NIO's intelligent driving business, and NIO will support his startup as a strategic shareholder — Li Bin emphasized that this arrangement will allow NIO to maintain strategic investment in the fields of embodied intelligence and physical AI on the basis of focusing on its core business, without affecting the company's income statement.

In other words, although many automakers have announced their entry into the humanoid robot field, NIO still chooses to focus on its core business of smart electric vehicles and will not step into the track of embodied intelligence itself — even though this track has already become extremely crowded.

As Li Bin emphasized at the previous communication meeting: NIO will focus on selling cars in a down-to-earth manner.

In any case, as the only automaker in the Chinese market that currently adheres to the pure electric route, NIO has bid farewell to the survival crisis and started to pursue better value delivery and operational performance, which is another arduous journey that will even face the cold shoulder of the capital market — but NIO has no time to worry about that, it can only make more sober and pragmatic choices in the continuous journey.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Timelines", author: Wang Zhi, published with authorization from 36Kr.