Courtside Financial Podcast

Xiaomi's EV division just posted its first annual profit — revenue up 224%, gross margin at 24.3%, 550,000 vehicle target for 2026. Li Auto just launched its first ever share buyback — stock down 35%, deliveries declining 19%, multiple executives departed. Same industry, same quarter, completely different stories. Huawei launched 10 vehicles in a single event with their most advanced lidar standar...

China's recent emergency oil price control, the first since 2013, highlights surging gas prices and a broader oil crisis. This move, capping oil prices due to rapid increases, is a significant development for the nation's economy. This action is viewed as a highly positive macroeconomic factor for the Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) industry, indicating a pivotal shift towards sustainable...

People are saying NIO's Shenji chip beats Nvidia by multiples. I just spent four days at Nvidia GTC watching Jensen Huang lay out the future of autonomous driving — and I need to set the record straight. The comparison being made is against Orin X. Nvidia's Orin X is two generations old. The honest comparison is Shenji against DRIVE Thor — Nvidia's current generation chip. And on raw compute, Thor...

Weeks ago on Courtside Financial, Obi pointed to the CYVN Holdings — now L'imad — connection between NIO and McLaren and said the architecture for a technology partnership already existed. Today William Li confirmed it at a user event in Wuhan: NIO is actively supplying battery packs to McLaren. Obi gives an honest assessment — 10 kilowatt hour packs for a hybrid McLaren won't move the rev...

Eight months into his full time career Obi had a six figure offer on the table. He turned it down, took a pay cut, and moved from Michigan to Austin Texas alone for the first time in his life. In this episode he breaks down the decision process, the manager conversation that made the offer appear in the first place, why he said no to $100K anyway, and one of the most important career lessons he&#3...

I just walked through my front door after five days in San Jose for Nvidia GTC. On the way out I drove past NIO's North American headquarters — saw the EP9, saw the team working inside. I came home to one of the most significant weeks in Chinese EV history. NIO posted its first ever quarterly profit. Today Xpeng posted its first ever net profit — 380 million yuan, gross margin at 21.3%, up nearly...

I just spent four days at Nvidia GTC in San Jose. Jensen Huang stood on stage and declared that the ChatGPT moment of self-driving cars has arrived. BYD and Geely are now building Level 4 autonomous driving programs on Nvidia silicon. Uber is deploying driverless vehicles in 28 cities across four continents by 2028. Meanwhile in China the range extended vs pure electric debate is reaching a boilin...

NIO's stock jumped 15% after earnings. Revenue up 76%. Gross profit up 163%. First ever quarterly net profit in eleven years. Q1 guidance calling for over 100% revenue growth year over year. So why does NIO still trade at a discount to its peers? Today I answer that question using Leapmotor as the contrast — a company that just delivered 600,000 vehicles, turned profitable for the first time,...

BMW, Mercedes, and Audi simultaneously replaced their China leadership — executives with 12 year tenures all shown the door within weeks of each other. Mercedes dealers openly revolted. Audi dealerships are losing money on every car they sell. Meanwhile NIO just hit 80,000 deliveries on the ES8 and signed a major ecosystem partnership with Tuhu, China's largest auto service platform covering 1...

Obi moves to Ann Arbor for a Fortune 500 cold calling internship and gets cussed out on his very first call. His manager tells him something the next morning that he's carried throughout his entire career. He comes back, makes 150 to 200 calls a day, eats lunch at his desk, battles a fellow intern in a Goku vs Vegeta competition that pushes them both to new levels — and leads the entire group...

Obi is reporting from San Jose the night before Nvidia GTC and breaking down one of the most important — and underreported — stories in the Chinese EV market right now. Some manufacturers are using OTA software updates to quietly limit battery capacity and motor power on vehicles that have hardware defects, avoiding expensive physical recalls by pushing silent software patches instead. Other manuf...

After slamming the anatomy book shut and telling his mom he was switching majors, Obi spent the summer working two jobs simultaneously — Enterprise Rent-A-Car by day, Cole Haan retail by night. Standing in that mall watching the clock, he knew he was paying his dues. His target: get into one of the top university sales programs in the country. One problem — the application window was already close...

Obi is driving to San Jose for Nvidia GTC — the world's biggest AI conference — and breaking down exactly why what gets announced there this week matters more for NIO's long term story than anything the stock did this month. Jensen Huang takes the stage Monday with next generation chip architecture and new automotive compute platforms that will set the pace for every smart driving system b...

I graduated high school smart but completely directionless. Ended up at community college on a pre-med track I never chose — because at 18, sitting in a registration office with my mom, I didn't have the courage to say no. I transferred to a university three hours from home, didn't know a single person, got so low I started seeing the school therapist. And one night cramming for an anatomy...

Honda just reported its first annual loss since listing in 1957 — nearly $15.7 billion written off on a failed EV strategy. Combined with write-downs from Ford, GM, and Stellantis, the Western auto industry has now lost over $67 billion trying to catch up on EVs. Obi breaks down what went wrong for Honda, what it signals for the broader global auto industry, and why the contrast with the Chinese E...

Obi breaks down his full tech sales origin story — from growing up in a Nigerian household where doctor, engineer, or lawyer were the only options, to switching majors without telling his parents, working two jobs in college, transferring schools, and getting cussed out on his very first cold call at a Fortune 500 internship. He walks through the exact mindset shift that turned it all around and h...

Following NIO's first profit in 11 years, this video contrasts their performance with Li Auto's recent earnings, providing crucial financial news. We break down the current state of the china ev market and what these developments mean for electric vehicles. Discover the implications for NIO's future in the competitive EV space. Following NIO's first profit in 11 years, this video c...

NIO hit its first quarterly profit in 11 years. Stock up 15% yesterday. Down 4% today. Up 16% on the week. Today I go deeper than the headlines and ask the harder question: did William Li actually win his long bet? And what comes next? WHAT WE COVER: — 100 billion yuan in losses over 11 years: what that road really means for long-term investors — Why NIO's 18% vehicle margin is more impressive...

NIO just reported its first quarterly profit in 11 years. They beat the top end of their own guidance. The stock closed at $5.70 — up 15.38% on the day. A week that started with NIO at $4.59 ended with a historic earnings report. Full breakdown in this episode: — The numbers: $178.9M non-GAAP operating profit, $40.4M GAAP net profit, 75.9% revenue growth, 17.5% gross margin — 124,807 Q4 deliveries...

NIO drops Q4 2025 earnings tomorrow. Potentially the first quarterly profit in eleven years. Tonight — four stories from today that, when you put them together, tell you exactly where this company stands heading into tomorrow. WHAT WE COVER: — CATL posts 42% profit growth and $10.4B net income: what it means for the broader EV ecosystem and NIO specifically — NIO's smart driving crosses 200M k...

NIO reports Q4 2025 earnings tomorrow morning. Potentially the first quarterly profit in the company's 11-year history. Tonight — a quick honest look at where NIO, Xpeng, and Li Auto all stand heading into 2026, based on the latest Chinese financial analysis. WHAT WE COVER: — Why all three are navigating serious headwinds simultaneously in 2026 — The ES8 launch wave is normalizing — NIO's...

Three days from NIO's Q4 2025 earnings — and potentially its first-ever quarterly profit. This week delivered three major stories that every NIO investor needs to understand before Monday. WHAT WE COVER: — NIO hits 2 million electric drive systems produced in Hefei — 23 months to double from 1 million, 99.6% pass rate, world-first 925V winding technology — NIO revamps European operations: Germ...

A viewer asked: if NIO trades in Hong Kong too, why is the volume low over there as well? It's one of the best questions from yesterday's episode — and the answer actually strengthens the thesis rather than challenging it. In this quick 5-minute take, Obi breaks down: — Why the Hang Seng is still below its 2007 peak nearly 20 years later — Why domestic Chinese retail and global institution...

NIO is 7 days from potentially its first quarterly profit ever. The stock is at $4.59 — down nearly 88% over five years. In this episode, Obi breaks down the honest reason why: it's not the business. It's the world around it. WHAT WE COVER: — The Iran conflict & oil price surge — why it matters for Chinese equities right now — US-China trade: structural shifts, 100% tariffs, and Trump&...

Back after two and a half weeks of work travel, the flu, and swapping my Alfa Romeo Stelvio for a Volvo C40 EV. Life happened — but NIO didn't slow down. In this episode, Obi breaks down everything that dropped between February 24 and March 1, 2026: product launches, chip news, infrastructure milestones, a major European partnership, and the February delivery numbers. WHAT WE COVER: — ES9 flag...