Niu has been on a comeback trail, and the previous annual results indicated that the company is sacrificing some margins for higher volumes. We wrote about this a few weeks back.
The strategy seems to be paying off for now, as in Q1 2025, the company reported a 57% jump in volumes to more than 203k units. In Q1 2024, volumes were 129k. However, we should consider Q1 2024 an anomaly, as volumes rebounded sharply after that. Looking at the last four quarters in isolation, Q1 2025 registered the lowest volume in sales.
As a result, Niu reported quarterly revenues of RMB 682 million (USD 94 million), a 35% jump from the previous year’s Q1 revenues of RMB 505 million.
However, revenues per scooter (RPS) dropped to RMB 3354, a 14.2% drop from per scooter revenue of RMB 3908 in Q1 2024. The overall RPS drop was driven by the China market, where RPS dropped from RMB 3568 to RMB 2985. During the same time period, niu managed to improve RPS from RMB 2577 to RMB 2962 in the international markets.
There has been a moderate decline in the gross margin, dropping from 18.93% in Q1 2024 to 17.31% in Q1 2025. Niu held on to margins as there has been a significant improvement on the cost side. Overall expenses stayed flat even with the sharp increase in sales. Niu kept the R&D expenses steady, but reduced the general and administrative expenses significantly. They managed to offset the increase in marketing and sales expenses.
Niu is still in the red on a Net basis with losses of RMB 38.8 million in Q1 2025. This was a 29.1% improvement from net losses of RMB 54.8 million in Q1 2024.
Net margins remained negative at -5.7% but improved significantly from Q1 2024 net margins of -10.85%.
Guidance
Niu expects the momentum to continue and has given guidance for second quarter revenues to be in the range of RMB 1,317 million to RMB 1,411 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 40% to 50%.
