Revenue grew 114.6% year-over-year, and losses narrowed by 48.1%. How does Ruqi Mobility navigate the red ocean of ride-hailing?｜Earnings Report Anomaly Perspective Lens

Ask AI · How does the Ripple model of Ruyi Travel achieve countercyclical growth?

Our newspaper (chinatimes.net.cn) reporter Liu Kai Beijing reports

On March 31, Ruyi Travel (9680.HK) released its full-year 2025 performance. The financial report shows the company achieved a total revenue of 5.29B yuan for the year, up 114.6% year-over-year; gross profit increased from 127 million yuan to 628 million yuan, a 395.3% increase; net loss narrowed by 48.1% to 293 million yuan.

This financial report conveys two signals: first, traditional travel services are still expanding rapidly, with both order volume and transaction value doubling; second, profitability has significantly improved, with gross margin rising from 5.1% to 11.9%. Additionally, the Robotaxi business is accelerating its scale expansion, and AI data services now cover multiple scenarios, have achieved commercial realization, and have become a new growth driver for the company’s future development.

Revenue doubles, gross profit surges

In 2025, Ruyi Travel’s business growth trend is obvious. Among them, the total order volume for travel services reached 233 million orders for the year, a 106.2% increase; transaction value rose from 2.98B yuan to 6.43B yuan, an increase of 115.7%. The main drivers of revenue growth come from two aspects: deeper cooperation with third-party travel service platforms and the implementation of regional expansion strategies.

From the revenue structure, travel service income increased from 2.2B yuan in 2024 to 5.1B yuan, accounting for 96.5% of total revenue, up from 89.3%. Revenue from fleet sales and maintenance accounted for only 0.5%, down from 9.6%. Although technical service revenue grew by 487.4%, its size of 160 million yuan accounts for only 3% of total revenue. This indicates that Ruyi Travel’s revenue sources are becoming more concentrated, with reliance on traditional travel services increasing rather than decreasing.

Along with business expansion, the cost structure also improved significantly. During the reporting period, the company’s general and administrative expenses decreased by 18.1% to 111 million yuan, and financial costs dropped to 905k yuan, a 48.9% decrease. From the cost side, the proportion of cost of revenue to total revenue declined, reflecting the beginning of scale effects. This “front-end expansion, back-end cost control” operational strategy partly explains the substantial improvement in gross profit. In 2025, the gross margins of the company’s three main businesses all reached double digits, with travel service gross margin rising from 5.0% to 11.7%, and technical services at 14.8%. Ruyi Travel told Huaxia Times that the increase in user traffic and order volume jointly drove the gross margin of travel services from 5.0% to 11.7%.

Viewing this gross margin performance in the context of the overall travel industry may better reveal its value. Among publicly disclosed ride-hailing platform financial reports, the industry’s gross margin in 2025 generally ranges from single digits to double digits. Leading platforms have slightly higher margins due to scale effects, but most small and medium platforms are still struggling near breakeven. Ruyi Travel’s 11.9% overall gross margin exceeds the industry average.

Automobile analyst Wang Kun told Huaxia Times that this is largely related to the regional focus effect brought by Ruyi Travel’s “Ripple Model.” Starting from the Greater Bay Area, replicating operational experience to surrounding cities and emerging regions, this “deep cultivation of core markets and outward radiation” strategy shows certain advantages in controlling customer acquisition costs and improving operational efficiency.

From the profit perspective, the narrowed loss mainly benefits from the dual effects of increased revenue scale and cost control. But the gross margin of 11.9% still belongs to a low-profit zone in the travel industry. Compared with the 14.8% gross margin of technical services, the profit space of traditional travel services remains limited. Although the growth rate of technical services is as high as 487.4%, its size of 160 million yuan is still insufficient to substantially impact the overall profit structure.

If the improvement in gross margin reflects cost control effectiveness, then the trend in average revenue per customer reveals another side of revenue quality. In 2025, Ruyi Travel’s average transaction value per order increased from 26.4 yuan to 27.6 yuan, a 4.5% increase, which is particularly difficult amid the price wars in the industry. Horizontally, according to data disclosed by multiple ride-hailing platforms, the industry’s average customer transaction value in 2025 generally shows a slight downward trend, with some platforms even experiencing single-digit negative growth. Ruyi Travel’s ability to double order volume while slightly increasing the customer transaction value may be related to maintaining pricing in core markets and avoiding excessive subsidies in emerging markets.

Synergy and tension between two tracks

Placing Ruyi Travel’s financial report in the broader environment of 2025, it may be easier to see the reasons for its growth. In 2025, many local regulators issued warnings about saturated ride-hailing capacity, with Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other core cities repeatedly reminding drivers to act rationally. Industry competition has shifted from incremental growth to stock competition, with compliance costs rising continuously, and price wars still occurring in some regions.

In this context, Ruyi Travel’s “Ripple Model” played a key role. Starting from the Greater Bay Area, replicating operational experience to surrounding cities and emerging regions, this space-for-growth strategy supported the doubling of order volume and transaction value. However, the average transaction value per order increased by only 4.5%, far below the growth rates of order volume and transaction value, reflecting structural pressures during expansion.

Operational data show that in 2025, Ruyi Travel’s transaction value growth (115.7%) and order volume growth (106.2%) were basically synchronized, meaning the main growth driver was order volume expansion rather than an increase in customer transaction value. This aligns with the overall industry trend, where in a saturated capacity market, the marginal cost of acquiring new orders is rising, and growth increasingly depends on subsidies.

Notably, technical services are the fastest-growing segment in the financial report. In 2025, this business’s revenue reached 160 million yuan, a 487.4% increase, with a gross margin of 14.8%. According to disclosures, AI data services and solutions are the main sources of income. Ruyi Travel has invested over 300 vehicles in Guangzhou for intelligent driving data collection, and has established three major service delivery bases nationwide, with a professional annotation team of over 1,500 people. Clients include GAC Group, Tencent, Xiaoma Zhixing, Li Auto, Alibaba Cloud, iFlytek, ByteDance, Meituan, and others, covering autonomous driving, internet, and AI fields.

However, in terms of revenue share, technical services account for only 3% of total revenue, compared to 96.5% from traditional travel services. This indicates that although technical services are viewed as a future growth direction, they currently have limited impact on the company’s revenue structure.

From the financial report, Robotaxi is another main line of Ruyi Travel’s technological layout. As of March 2026, the company’s Robotaxi fleet has expanded to about 600 vehicles, covering Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and the Hengqin Guangdong-Macao Deep Cooperation Zone. According to the “Robotaxi+” strategic plan, the company aims to build a fleet of over 10,000 Robotaxis with partners over the next five years, expand operations to hundreds of cities, and invest 1 billion yuan to build 1,000 third-level operation and maintenance networks in 100 cities.

Financially, the commercialization of Robotaxi remains in early stages. The report shows that “other service income,” including Robotaxi services, was 5.76 million yuan, only 0.1% of total revenue. Meanwhile, the company continues R&D investments in autonomous driving and Robotaxi operation services. According to the use plan of the proceeds from the global offering, about 135 million HKD will be invested in this field in 2025, with the remaining 180 million HKD continuing to be invested in 2026 and beyond.

Across the industry, betting on Robotaxi has become a common choice for many mobility platforms. In 2025, Hailo announced its entry into the Robotaxi field, aiming for mass production by 2026. Cao Cao Mobility also released a “ten-year, hundred-city, trillion-yuan” global strategic goal. Under the accelerated layout of all parties, factors such as technology route selection, commercialization pace, and operational cost control will be key variables determining the competitive landscape.

Wang Kun told reporters that the core contradiction Ruyi Travel currently faces is that traditional travel services need continuous cost reduction and efficiency improvement to maintain cash flow, while frontier businesses like Robotaxi require ongoing investment to capture future market share. How to balance between the two will directly affect the company’s mid-term financial performance and market positioning.

Editor: Li Yan’an Chief Editor: Yu Jianping