NIO’s revenue growth losses intensified last year, and the hope of ＂survival＂ is ready to be handed over to new brands

On the evening of March 5, NIO released its full-year financial results for 2023, which were mixed.

I am happy that the revenue reached a new high. According to the data, in 2023, the total revenue of NIO increased by 12.9% year-on-year to 55.62 billion yuan. Among them, the sales of automobiles were 49.2573 billion yuan, an increase of 8.2% year-on-year. The increase in revenue was mainly due to the increase in sales of NIO in the past year. NIO delivered 160,000 new cars in 2023, an increase of 37% year-on-year. But this figure did not meet NIO’s original target of 250,000 vehicles.

Hefei Jianghuai NIO Factory

The worry is that losses have intensified. According to the financial report data, NIO’s net loss in 2023 was 20.72 billion yuan, an increase of 43.5% year-on-year; the adjusted net loss was 18.30 billion yuan, an increase of 51% year-on-year. During the reporting period, NIO’s gross profit margin and automobile gross profit margin both declined compared with the previous year. NIO’s gross profit margin fell from 10.4% last year to 5.5%, and automobile gross profit margin fell from 13.7% last year to 9.5%.

It is reported that in order to cope with market competition and expand sales scale, NIO will officially launch a sub-brand of 200,000-300,000 yuan mass market this year, code-named "Alps", the first model will be released in the second quarter of this year, and delivery will start in the fourth quarter.

NIO CEO Li Bin sees the new brand as an inflection point in NIO’s performance. He revealed that the first car of the sub-brand will compete directly with Tesla Model Y, and said that the cost will also be about 10% lower than Model Y. In addition, Li Bin said at the earnings conference that there will be more than 100,000 yuan of models listed next.

In terms of cash reserves, as of December 31, 2023, NIO held about 57.30 billion yuan in cash and cash equivalents. This was mainly due to two rounds of strategic investments totaling $3.30 billion by Abu Dhabi investment institution CYVN in the second half of last year.

However, NIO still has two huge bills to pay, a $29.77 billion payable and a $9.82 billion loan.

Previously, NIO has made it clear that the NIO brand will not release a new car in 2024, which means that before the first model of the sub-brand is officially delivered in the fourth quarter, the eight models currently on sale by NIO will still bear the responsibility of supporting NIO for a long time.

Looking ahead to this year’s Quarter 1, NIO expects its new car deliveries to be between 31,000 – 33,000 vehicles; revenue is expected to be between 10.499 billion – 11.087 billion yuan, and NIO brand gross margin will reach 15% -18% this year.