NEW YORK, March 3, 2026, 08:01 EST — Premarket
NIO Inc shares fell 1.5% in premarket trading on Tuesday to $4.65, after closing down 3.1% on Monday at $4.72. 1
The move comes as investors parse a burst of monthly sales figures from China’s carmakers, and look ahead to NIO’s results next week. February was a long Lunar New Year month, and the market is trying to work out what’s seasonal noise and what’s the start of something weaker.
Chinese automakers broadly logged sharp year-on-year drops in February deliveries, with BYD down 41% and XPeng down 50%, while NIO stood out with a 58% rise. “First-quarter sales will likely be soft,” Vincent Sun, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said, adding that a trade-in subsidy scheme tied to car prices could favor higher-priced models. 2
A March 2 filing showed NIO delivered 20,797 vehicles in February, up 57.6% from a year earlier, including 15,159 under the NIO brand, 2,981 from ONVO and 2,657 from FIREFLY. The company said year-to-date deliveries were 47,979 vehicles and cumulative deliveries reached 1,045,571 as of Feb. 28, and it highlighted a milestone of 100 million cumulative battery swaps completed on Feb. 6.
The jump in year-on-year deliveries still masked a sequential drop. Deliveries fell 23.49% from January as the Spring Festival holiday landed in mid-to-late February, CnEVPost reported. 3
NIO has said it will report unaudited fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results on March 10 before the U.S. market opens, with a conference call scheduled for 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. 4
In February, the company said it expected its first-ever adjusted operating profit — a non-standard measure that excludes some items — for the fourth quarter of 2025, helped by higher sales and cost cuts. 5
For traders, the next question is less about the February headline and more about what comes with the earnings: vehicle margin, cash use, and whether NIO can keep volumes up without leaning harder on incentives in a crowded market.
But the downside case hasn’t gone away. A soft start to the year, a renewed price war, or a slower ramp in newer brands could pull down profit per vehicle and force the company to spend more to defend share.
Investors’ next clear catalyst is March 10, when NIO reports and takes questions, with any guidance on first-quarter demand and costs likely to drive the next leg in the stock.
