Ruqi Travel’s revenue will double in 2025, and profit improvement relies on cutting expenses.
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On March 31, Ruqi Mobility (9680.HK) released its full-year 2025 earnings report.
In 2025, a year when capacity saturation warnings for ride-hailing appeared frequently across China and the industry was locked in a brutal price war, Ruqi Mobility recorded a 114.6% year-on-year revenue growth, with total annual revenue reaching 5.286 billion yuan. At the same time, its gross margin doubled from single digits to 11.9%, with an overall profit indicator improvement of 48.1%.
But stripping away the high-growth labels like “doubling” or “surging”, and examining the structure of this 5.286 billion yuan revenue, this mobility platform, lauded as the “first Robotaxi stock” in the Hong Kong market, is facing the dual challenge of razor-thin profits in its traditional capacity business and heavy capital investment in its cutting-edge tech business.
The financial report shows that in 2025, mobility service revenues including Robotaxi grew by 131.8% year-on-year to 5.097 billion yuan. This means that traditional mobility services made up as much as 96.4% of the total revenue.
In an industry where overall incremental growth has peaked, Ruqi Mobility’s more than 130% scale expansion did not stem from organic growth in tier-one cities, but relied on the “ripple model”—migrating the Greater Bay Area’s operational system to lower-tier and surrounding cities.
This space-for-growth strategy has boosted overall revenue, but lower-tier markets naturally suffer from lower per-customer income, and the platform often has to bear hidden compliance and driver recruitment costs offline.
So, why was the gross margin able to jump from single digits to 11.9%? Why did profit improve by 48.1%? The answer lies on the other side of the coin: extreme expense control.
The financial report clearly states that financial costs and general and administrative expenses achieved “double-digit declines” during the year. This shows that Ruqi Mobility’s financial turning point was to a large extent “squeezed out” by cutting back-office spending and trimming unnecessary operational costs.
On the front end, empty drive rates were reduced by optimizing the dispatch algorithm; on the back end, all rigid expenditures were strictly controlled. This defensive financial strategy stabilized cash flow, but also shows that the profit ceiling for traditional mobility services is very clear—this is a business highly dependent on scale effects, with knife-thin margins.
Of the nearly 5.3 billion yuan in total revenue, the part with true high gross margin and potential is the “technology services revenue”, which only accounted for about 3%. In 2025, revenue from this segment surged 487.4% year-on-year to 160 million yuan.
This is where Ruqi Mobility differentiates, and it is also the core support for its attempt to maintain a tech stock valuation in Hong Kong.
Currently, the entire automotive industry is in a sprint towards advanced intelligent driving and end-to-end large-model R&D, with OEMs and algorithm companies ravenous for high-quality real-world road test data covering complex long-tail scenarios.
Ruqi Mobility is essentially repurposing its hundreds of thousands of ride-hailing vehicles on the road as high-frequency data collection terminals. By providing AI data service products (such as labeled data and HD maps), it is also attempting to expand into the SaaS services and Tier-1 data supply chain for carmakers’ B-side.
From a financial perspective, the marginal cost of this 160 million yuan revenue is very low, making it the most likely growth engine for future net profits. But from a business standpoint, a 3% revenue share is still too weak.
In the short to medium term, this “second growth curve” serves more as a valuation chip in the capital market and is not yet sufficient to fully cover the core business’s losses on the profit and loss statement.
As another piece in the technology puzzle, the commercialization process of Robotaxi comes across as somewhat delicate in the report. Official data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Ruqi’s Robotaxi fleet expanded to around 600 vehicles, doubling compared to the end of 2025.
In the “human + driverless” hybrid dispatch ecosystem, Ruqi Mobility plays the role of commercial operator. However, from a financial perspective, these 600 Robotaxis are currently far from profit-generators; they are unequivocal “money burners.”
Although the costs of key hardware like LiDAR are coming down, building a fleet of hundreds of Robotaxis, early custom development, safety operator labor, data center computing power, and long-term road-vehicle coordination operations all require massive capital expenditure.
This constitutes the central paradox in Ruqi Mobility’s financials: traditional mobility is striving for cost reduction and efficiency, aiming for improved profits; while the Robotaxi fleet’s capacity doubling could, at any moment, tear open the narrowed loss gap again.
How to control the pace of heavy capital investment in Robotaxi, while ensuring the cash flow of the core business does not dry up, will be a true test of management’s tightrope-walking skills.
Overall, Ruqi Mobility’s 2025 earnings report presents a mobility firm in a red-ocean industry, trying to stop the bleeding with refined operations and buying time for transformation through tech businesses.
The 114.6% revenue growth and improved gross margin prove its survival resilience in a brutal market, but capital markets price coldly: the traditional ride-hailing story lacks explosive power, and the 160 million yuan tech income, as well as the still-unprofitable Robotaxi, are not enough to completely reshape its fundamentals.
Before thoroughly crossing the breakeven point, Ruqi Mobility’s “tech credentials” will still need to go through a long and costly commercialization test.
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