Nio Inc. flagged first-quarter results likely to disappoint market watchers after finishing 2024 on a weak note.

The Chinese company's American depositary receipts tumbled 7% to $4.39 ahead of the opening bell.

The Chinese electric vehicle maker now expects to deliver only as many as 43,000 cars in the three months that will end March 31 and report revenue of as much as 12.9 billion yuan ($1.8 billion), according to a statement Friday. That’s short of the around 65,000 units and 17.8 billion yuan the market was looking for.

Nio Chief Financial Officer Stanley Qu pledged to “sharpen our focus on enhancing profitability by driving cost reductions through technological advancements.”

After more than 10 years trying to crack China’s car market, Nio is still struggling. The Shanghai-based manufacturer, which was founded in 2014, is yet to break into the black on a full-year basis, due mainly to its high research and development expenses and large operational costs, including investments in battery-swapping stations.

While the world’s largest battery manufacturer, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., earlier this week agreed to invest up to 2.5 billion yuan in building out a battery-swapping network across China in collaboration with Nio, the jury is out on whether consumers will ever fully embrace replacing whole cells as a viable way of recharging their electric cars.

Nio has been the recipient of several other funding rounds as well. In September, it secured 3.3 billion yuan from a consortium of strategic investors including Hefei government-backed funds and in 2023, it got a $2.94 billion capital injection from Abu Dhabi’s CYVN Holdings.

To broaden its appeal and increase sales, Nio has adopted a multi-brand strategy, introducing a mass-market offering, Onvo, and the even more budget friendly Firefly. It’s also undergoing an internal restructure and cutting staff. Local media reports have said that’s meant merging its mobile phone software team with its digital cockpit team, for example, to eliminate positions.

Those efforts haven’t been fully realized yet. Nio’s net loss for the full year was 22.4 billion yuan, worse than analyst estimates for a 20.1 billion yuan deficit. CEO William Li has said he wants Nio to achieve profitability in 2026 and hit a target of doubling sales this year to around 440,000 vehicles.

For the fourth-quarter ended Dec. 31, Nio reported a net loss of 7.1 billion yuan while revenue came in at 19.7 billion yuan. Its expectations for deliveries this quarter are well down on the 72,689 shipements it managed in the final three months of 2024.