NIO ET9.
On March 5, Beijing time, NIO released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. This is the second new power car company to publish its annual report after Ideal.
According to the data, in the fourth quarter of 2023, NIO's revenue was 1710 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 65%；The gross profit margin of the whole vehicle was 119%, reaching double digits for two consecutive quarters.
In 2023, NIO's revenue will reach a new high of 55.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 129%；Net loss (adjusted) 183500 million yuan, an increase of 51% over the previous year. It is worth mentioning that as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, NIO's cash reserves reached 57.3 billion yuan, a significant increase of 12.1 billion yuan from the previous quarter.
The gross profit margin of the whole vehicle for the whole year was 95%
According to the financial report, in 2023, NIO delivered a total of 160038 new vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 307%。Total revenue for the year was 55617.9 billion yuan, an increase of 129%。Adjusted net loss (non-GAAP) for the full year 2023 was 1835.7 billion yuan, an increase of 51 over the previous year1%。The company's gross profit margin for the full year was 55%, compared to 10 in 20224%；In the same period, the gross profit margin of the whole vehicle was 95% compared to 13 in 20227%。
Regarding the situation of "double high" revenue and net loss of NIO, Zhang Xiang, director of the International Cooperation and Research Center of Vodaf Digital Vehicles, told Times Finance that as a new power car company that has not been established for a long time, it is normal for NIO to have many models and high R&D investment, and both revenue and loss.
From the perspective of market performance, in June 2023, NIO will make adjustments for the first time, reducing the price of the whole series by 30,000 yuan, driving the delivery volume of NIO to rebound in the third quarter. However, as the competition in the new energy vehicle market becomes more intense, NIO's sales in the fourth quarter are once again the first, with monthly deliveries of 160,000-180,000 units.
NIO will have 8 models on sale in 2023, covering the main market segments of mid-to-large sedans and SUVs of high-end brands, and its products have also switched to NT20 platform.
NIO's 2023 annual report.
Faced with the question of "alive" during the live broadcast, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, said frankly: "Let users talk. If the user does not support us, it is not interesting for us to live, and if the user supports us, we will live a long life. ”
In the financial report, NIO gave a sales forecast of 31,000-33,000 units in the first quarter of this year, and an estimated revenue of 10.5 billion yuan to 110 billion yuan in the first quarter900 million yuan. Sales for January and February have already been announced, which means that sales in March will need to reach 13,000-15,000 units to meet the target.
With the full launch of the 2024 model, it will bring a new boost to sales. Deliveries of the 2024 ES8, EC7, ES6, EC6, and ET5T will begin in March. Deliveries of the 2024 ET5 will begin in April; Deliveries of the 2024 ES7 will begin in May; The 2024 ET7 will be released in April.
At the same time, NIO will launch the full push of NOP+ in the second quarter, including highways, urban areas, battery swaps, etc., and the end-side multimodal large model NOM GPT will also be launched soon.
NIO said that with the gradual introduction of second-generation technology platform models to the market and the improvement of NIO's organizational efficiency, NIO is expected to further expand its market scale in 2024.
R&D expenses exceed 10 billion, and efforts are made to charge and swap facilities
However, in NIO's losses, R&D expenses account for a fairly high proportion.
According to the financial report, R&D expenses in the fourth quarter of 2023 were 39RMB72.1 billion, mainly due to the increase in the cost of design and development of new products and technologies, as well as the increase in the cost of R&D functional personnel, an increase of 307%, exceeding 3 billion yuan for five consecutive quarters. The annual R&D investment was 134300 million yuan, exceeding 10 billion yuan for two consecutive years.
The continuous investment in technology and charging and swapping infrastructure has also become NIO's moat. By the end of 2023, NIO has invested more than 40 billion yuan in R&D, and the number of global patents has exceeded 8,500.
In 2023, NIO released the automaker's first vehicle global operating system, SKYOS Tianshu, the LiDAR main control chip "Yang Jian", and NIO Link NIO Panoramic Interconnection, announced the mass-produced cross-domain fusion supercomputing cluster ADAM CCC, and released core technologies such as the intelligent driving chip Shenji NX9031 and the global 900V high-voltage architecture.
Along with the release of the financial report, NIO also announced that the 150-degree ultra-long battery pack will be launched in the second quarter.
NIO said that as the largest battery pack mass-produced for passenger cars in China, NIO models equipped with this battery pack have a range of up to 1,055 kilometers.
According to public information, NIO's 150kWh battery pack was released at NIO Day 2021. It is a semi-solid-state battery with an energy density of up to 360Wh kg, exceeding the 255Wh kg of CATL Kirin batteries, and is one of the products with the highest power and highest energy density that can be mass-produced in China.
Qin Lihong, president of NIO, said in February 2023 that NIO's 150 kWh battery costs a lot, and the cost is equivalent to that of an ET5. However, with the lithium carbonate** falling from a high of 600,000 yuan per ton to about 100,000 yuan per ton, the cost of 150 kWh batteries is no longer out of reach.
NIO battery swap station.
In addition to semi-solid-state batteries with ultra-long battery life, the construction of charging and swapping infrastructure is also advancing rapidly. NIO said it will build another 1,000 battery swap stations and add 20,000 charging piles throughout the year. **Battery swap stations and 640kW fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging piles will be deployed to further improve the user power-up experience.
It is worth noting that the battery swap mode is currently being recognized by many parties. Up to now, many companies such as Changan, Geely, JAC, Chery, and China Southern Power Grid Energy Storage Technology have reached battery swap cooperation with NIO, which is also expected to become a new growth point for NIO.
The first car of the sub-brand is benchmarked against the Model Y
Faced with cost and profit problems, Li Bin is trying his best to expand the space.
In December 2023, NIO announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that NIO and Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co., Ltd. have signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition of certain production equipment and assets, and will acquire the production equipment and assets of the first advanced manufacturing base and the second advanced manufacturing base from JAC, with a total price of about RMB 31 excluding tax600 million yuan.
Li Bin once said at the performance meeting, "From the perspective of manufacturing, if we are completely independent of manufacturing, the manufacturing cost will drop by 10%."
NIO EC6.
In addition, in the face of the menacing auto market war, Li Bin pinned more hopes on the sub-brand Alps.
At the 2023 financial report** meeting, Li Bin said that the Alps brand will be released in the second quarter of this year, and the first product will be released in the third quarter of this year and delivered in the fourth quarter. The brand will adopt a separate sales network and part of NIO's after-sales system, and share a battery swap network with NIO, with battery swap stations to be deployed in April this year. This shared battery swap network will be shared with other brands, but some battery swap stations will also be exclusive to the NIO brand.
Li Bin said that the Alps brand is oriented to the mass market, and the first car has been undergoing various tests, so there will be spy photos leaking. The brand focuses on the home market and will launch different products depending on the size of the family. "We have deeper research and a late-mover advantage, so we believe it is very competitive. ”
Recently, a camouflage image of the first Alpine model circulated on the Internet, and the new car has the shape of a coupe SUV, and the slogan "Better than Edamame Y" is printed on the glass.
At the "user face-to-face" event on March 2, Li Bin bluntly said that the opponent of the new car is Tesla Model Y, and it is "all-round benchmarking". Li Bin also shouted in the air: "Users who want to buy Model Y can wait, our car ** will definitely be cheaper." ”
Regarding the advantages of the new car, Li Bin summed it up as: "The Alps are bigger than you (competitors), you can change the battery, the screen is bigger than you, and the charging is faster than you." Combined with NIO's technical roadmap, the new car will not only be based on NT30 technology platform, 800V overcharging, battery swapping and other configurations will also be readily available.
For the future model planning, Li Bin also made spoilers. He said that the second model is an SUV for large families, which has entered the mold opening stage and is progressing smoothly. A third product is already in the process of being developed.
At the same time, Li Bin said that the new products are mainly responsible for the task of volume, and the NIO brand is responsible for ensuring the gross profit margin. NIO's main brand will not launch a cheaper car than ET5, and new cars will be more expensive, and the company "will not change volume in the way of ** war".
At the event on March 2, Li Bin bluntly said: "In order to avoid competition between Alps and NIO, we will continue to improve the tonality and pricing of NIO's brand in the future to ensure that there is enough space for Alps, while NIO will really focus on high-end and give up part of the mid-range market." ”
Li Bin is very optimistic about the prospects of Alps, believing that a single model can achieve monthly sales of 40,000-50,000 yuan. As for whether it can be so competitive, let's wait and see.