Nio: From a $1 Billion Loss to a $40 Million Profit in One Year

The Chinese EV maker Nio posted a profit in the fourth quarter of 2025 for the first time since its founding. After ten years of losses and billions in burned capital, this marks a turning point.

Q4 net profit: 282.7 million yuan ($40.4 million) vs. a net loss of 7.1 billion yuan a year earlier.

The details

Revenue rose 76% to 34.7 billion yuan ($5 billion), while vehicle sales jumped 81%. In the fourth quarter, Nio delivered 124,807 cars, up 72% year over year.

The key driver was the ES8, Nio’s premium SUV with a starting price above 400,000 yuan (about $56,000) and a gross margin of around 20%. That model alone accounted for 46% of all deliveries in December.

At the same time, Nio cut costs aggressively:

F&D expenses: -44% to 2 billion yuan ($286 million)
Sales and administrative expenses: -28% to 3.5 billion yuan ($500 million)
Overall margin: from 11.7% to 17.5%

For 2026, Nio is targeting more than 450,000 deliveries, up from 326,000 for full-year 2025. In the first quarter, the company expects 80,000 to 83,000 vehicles, up around 90% year over year, but a noticeable decline compared with Q4.

The stock reacted accordingly: +15% in New York to $5.70, bringing market capitalization to around $14.4 billion.

Margin vs. volume

For years, Nio was seen as a textbook example of how brutal the price war in China’s EV market has become. The fact that a premium carmaker is now the first startup to turn profitable shows that margin beats volume.

For comparison: BYD achieved a gross margin of 17.6% in 2025 with 4.6 million cars sold. Nio reached 17.5% with 326,000 units.

The question is whether Nio can sustain that profit. Its 2025 full-year operating loss still stood at 11.5 billion yuan ($1.6 billion), and Q1 2026 is expected to be weaker.

👉 Sources: NEVPost, Caixin, Yicai