Nio 4Q25 First Take: despite having pre-announced, the quarter still came in strong, beating the top end of guidance and Street estimates.
Specifically:
1) Total revenue was RMB 34.7bn (+76% YoY), above the Street at RMB 33.6bn, driven by an upside in vehicle sales.
This was the core driver of the beat.
Vehicle sales revenue reached RMB 31.6bn vs. RMB 30.6bn expected.
ASP climbed quickly QoQ from RMB 221k to RMB 253k, driven by the high-priced ES8’s strong outperformance.
ES8 mix rose by 27ppt QoQ to 32%.
The sharp ASP uplift also drove a meaningful improvement in vehicle GPM.
Together with platformized supply-chain cost-down and scale benefits, 4Q vehicle GPM reached 18.1% (+340bps QoQ), in line with the prior guide of ~18%.
2) Opex discipline was notable and supported profit expansion.
Costs were tightly managed across functions.
S&M expense was just RMB 3.5bn, down RMB 650mn QoQ from RMB 4.2bn and below the RMB 4.0bn guide, driven by payroll savings from headcount reductions.
R&D fell by RMB 360mn to RMB 2.0bn, below the Street’s RMB 2.5bn, as NT3.0 development wrapped up and efficiency improved.
With revenue and GPM beats plus opex relief, net profit turned positive.
OP was RMB 800mn, above the guided range high end of RMB 200–700mn.
As for Q1 guidance in a seasonally soft quarter:
Management provided the following.
1) Volume guide is below expectations: 80–83k units vs. the Street at 89k, implying Mar deliveries of 32–35k (Jan/Feb at 27k/21k).
The miss likely reflects seasonal weakness and purchase tax rollback, ES8 delivery timing shifting some units to Q2 due to supply-chain disruptions, and softer ONVO L90 demand.
2) But revenue guide is above expectations: RMB 24.5–25.2bn vs. the Street at RMB 24.5bn.
Despite the volume shortfall, revenue is guided above as ES8 mix keeps rising, lifting ASP to RMB 265–270k from RMB 253k in 4Q.
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