As China's automotive industry enters a new phase characterized by new energy adoption, direct sales channels, and stock-based competition, users are no longer satisfied with merely searching for information. Instead, they are pursuing integrated one-stop services covering the entire vehicle lifecycle—from browsing and selection to purchase, usage, and replacement. This shift makes a profound transformation inevitable for online automotive service platforms.
On the evening of March 5, AUTOHOME-S (ATHM.US, 02518), a leading online automotive service platform in China, released its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. This disclosure offers an excellent opportunity to observe how a top-tier platform in the automotive online service sector is executing its strategic transformation amid industry changes.
According to the financial report, the company's total revenue for the fourth quarter was RMB 1.46 billion, with adjusted net profit attributable to AUTOHOME-S reaching RMB 304 million. For the full year of 2025, total revenue amounted to RMB 6.45 billion, and adjusted net profit attributable to AUTOHOME-S was RMB 1.61 billion.
Although these figures do not indicate robust growth, the company’s extensive and bold innovative initiatives throughout the year make this an ideal moment to evaluate the outcomes of AUTOHOME-S’s strategic direction. Liu Chi, Chairman and CEO of the company, stated that 2025 marked the first year of AUTOHOME-S’s transformation from an automotive information platform into a comprehensive automotive ecosystem service provider.
In response to profound industry changes, the company has focused on two core initiatives: in content, it continues to enhance high-quality content development, improve the creator ecosystem, and strengthen new media dissemination capabilities; in services, it is accelerating the establishment of an integrated online-to-offline service system to provide users and industry partners with a more efficient and convenient full-cycle automotive service experience.
Throughout this transformation, artificial intelligence has served as the engine, comprehensively empowering product innovation and operational optimization. It is evident that as the automotive consumer market undergoes significant changes, AUTOHOME-S has not adopted a passive defensive stance. Instead, with determined strategic steps, it has strengthened its comprehensive service capabilities by building on content as its foundation, leveraging new energy as a growth engine, utilizing AI digitalization as a core driver, and establishing used cars as a differentiated competitive advantage. These efforts are expected to lay a crucial foundation for future performance growth.
In the online automotive service industry, high-quality content acts like a precise "magnet," attracting users with genuine car-buying intentions to the platform. For AUTOHOME-S, which is built on content, continuously optimizing content development remains key to building professional trust, enhancing user retention and growth, and establishing long-term competitive barriers.
The financial report for 2025 shows that AUTOHOME-S enhanced its content development through innovative reporting, a strengthened creator ecosystem, and expanded content boundaries, thereby achieving high daily active users and strong user stickiness, which solidifies the platform’s traffic foundation.
Specifically, in content innovation, during the November 2025 Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition, the company creatively integrated exhibition coverage with a creator conference. Centered around the theme of "useful auto show reporting," it conducted an immersive live broadcast lasting 23 hours over two days, simultaneously covering six major new media platforms to achieve multi-dimensional, scenario-based content dissemination.
In deepening the creator ecosystem, the company launched "ZhiJia WanXiang," a one-stop content marketing platform for the automotive industry, in the fourth quarter. By focusing on five vertical fields—industry experts, technology, racing, outdoor, and overseas—it further expanded its ecosystem service boundaries, attracting over 2,500 high-quality new media creators from both AUTOHOME-S and across the web.
Numbers serve as the best indicator. As the company continues to optimize its content development, this strategy has generated strong positive feedback. According to QuestMobile data, AUTOHOME-S’s average daily mobile users reached 77.51 million in December 2025, remaining stable year-over-year, further demonstrating the powerful appeal of its high-quality content ecosystem.
Simultaneously, the company’s "ZhiJia Media MCN" continued to expand, aggregating over 500 high-quality creators across various fields. Its total user reach on new media platforms successfully exceeded 100 million, indicating the emergence of scale effects in the new media dissemination domain.
These operational metrics—77.51 million average daily mobile users and over 100 million total user reach on new media—represent not just traffic but also the "live water" that enables subsequent operations such as mall transactions and financial services. As the company’s high-quality content "moat" continues to deepen, it is expected to positively impact revenue and monetization, achieving the effect of "better content driving greater profitability."
In December 2025, the retail and wholesale penetration rates of new energy passenger vehicles in China reached 62.2% and 64.3%, respectively, officially entering the "60% era." As new energy vehicles become widely adopted, automotive channel models are also being restructured, shifting from "offline-first" to "deep online-offline integration." Against this backdrop, AUTOHOME-S’s acceleration of online-offline integration through an O2O new retail model represents a forward-thinking move.
From a strategic perspective, AUTOHOME-S’s breakthrough with the O2O new retail model is primarily reflected in its new energy business布局. In the new energy sector, the company uses its mall business as a leverage point to preliminarily explore the integrated new retail model. Following a trial run in late September 2025, the AUTOHOME-S Mall was officially launched in the fourth quarter.
Specifically, on the online front, the mall further integrates industry resources and streamlines vehicle information flow to optimize the user car-selection decision-making experience. Offline, the company focuses on establishing a franchise network in underserved lower-tier cities, precisely filling the channel gaps of mainstream new energy vehicle manufacturers.
Additionally, scenario-based operations through offline events have become important touchpoints for O2O integration. Throughout 2025, AUTOHOME-S conducted over 5,000 offline auto shows and group purchase events nationwide. Building on this, it proactively cross-collaborated with youth culture IPs such as esports and music festivals, extending the "browse-select-try-buy" car purchase chain into immersive experience spaces.
In its used car business布局, AUTOHOME-S is gradually forming a differentiated competitive barrier. The company has created one-stop full-cycle services for both buying and selling used cars. This includes AI valuation, door-to-door inspection, multi-channel high-price selling, a vast inventory of real vehicle sources, multi-dimensional stringent inspection, full transparency on vehicle condition and pricing, complemented by low-interest financing, insurance, extended warranty, after-sales protection, and full assistance with transfer, filing, licensing, and home delivery. This ensures a worry-free, reliable, efficient, and secure used car transaction experience for both buyers and sellers.
Under such strategic布局, AUTOHOME-S’s "second growth curve" is gradually taking shape, becoming a new growth engine for the company.
In recent years, as artificial intelligence technology rapidly penetrates various industry application scenarios, "AI as the new productivity" has become an unspoken consensus across sectors. How to empower business processes with AI technology to achieve significant leaps in operational efficiency, decision-making efficiency, and service efficiency is a critical topic for major enterprises.
AUTOHOME-S’s answer to this question is to fully embrace AI transformation and actively promote the deep integration of technological capabilities with business scenarios.
On one hand, AUTOHOME-S uses AI digitalization as its core driving force to reconstruct the entire service chain. During the reporting period, the company successively launched its self-developed "Cang Jie" large model and the "Tian Shu" intelligent platform, integrating DeepSeek and vertical-specific data. It also introduced AI-powered products like the AI Marketing Brain, Customer Acquisition Pioneer, Lead Master, Sales Champion Tool, and Vehicle Inspection Expert, covering the entire marketing, sales, and assessment chain.
Furthermore, the company launched user-side AI tools such as the AI Smart Assistant, AI Buyer, AI Vehicle Inspection Expert, and AI Smart Auction, helping achieve efficiency leaps across multiple dimensions.
On the other hand, AUTOHOME-S is also using AI technology to promote the standardization system construction for used car services. For example, on the vehicle source side, the "AI Vehicle Inspection Expert" addresses information asymmetry, making "non-standard" vehicle conditions transparent and values standardized. The company also established a strict vehicle source certification alliance with nine authoritative inspection institutions, pushing the used car transaction environment towards standardization and transparency.
According to the latest data, the company has completed the AI upgrade of its entire product line within the year, achieving simultaneous enhancement in user experience and industrial service capabilities. To date, the upgraded digital products have successfully served over 50 mainstream automotive brands, injecting new momentum into the digital transformation and intelligent upgrade of the automotive industry.
In summary, it is well known that capital markets focus on quarterly reports, but ecosystem building delivers a "century-long report card." Trading short-term "deceleration" for long-term "industry definition power" is an account called "strategic value." AUTOHOME-S’s endeavor to "reshape the automotive ecosystem with AI and offline stores" is essentially a strategic choice to "trade today’s net profit for tomorrow’s industry definition power."
In the short term, the company’s profit scale might be somewhat affected by heavy investments in content, new energy, AI, and used cars. However, in the long run, by making upfront investments to seize industry definition power and achieving the critical leap from an information media to an ecosystem platform, the long-term value brought by this strategic布局 is self-evident.
Looking ahead, as AUTOHOME-S’s growth momentum continues to be unleashed, the company is poised for a dual leap in both performance and valuation.
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