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Back of Napkin

NIO Inc. NIO

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The bet you're really making is that NIO keeps selling more electric cars in China every year, 107,658 of them last quarter, and finally makes money on them instead of losing money on each one. You're betting its battery-swap stations, where an owner drives in and a robot fits a full battery in about three minutes instead of charging, keep pulling buyers toward three brands: NIO for the rich, ONVO for families, FIREFLY for the city. Right now it is going well: the biggest sales quarter the company has ever had, up 49%, with the loss per share shrunk to almost nothing. You pay a little more than half of one year's sales and about 16 times the company's net worth, among the higher multiples since 2018 though the stock price sits near its 52-week low.

Key data

Price$3.80
52-week range$3.71 – $8.02
Price / sales (TTM)0.6x
Price / net worth15.6x

NIO · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$3$5$7$9$12 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jul '25Feb '26Sep '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

NIO builds electric cars in China under three badges. The NIO brand is the expensive one, sedans and SUVs that compete with BMW and Mercedes, some priced above RMB400,000, like the All-New ES8. ONVO is the cheaper family line, FIREFLY the small premium city car. What sets it apart is the battery-swap station: rather than wait to charge, an owner pulls into a bay and a robot swaps the drained pack for a full one in minutes. NIO owns and runs thousands of these across China, a fixed cost no rival carries, and it lets the company sell a car without the battery and rent the battery monthly. Last quarter it delivered 107,658 cars, up 49% from a year earlier, and for the first time all three brands grew both volume and average price at once. The money is made on the cars and, in time, on swap subscriptions and services. Today it is still lost: about $2bn of operating loss in 2025 on $12.5bn of sales.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05Closing thoughts
  6. 06Methodology

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