Autohome faces compliance scrutiny as last year's revenue and net profit both decline

(Source: Hongtu FLY)

Radar Finance noted that not long ago, the AutoHome platform was also punished for unstandardized testing.

In January this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China, together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments, launched a special campaign to tackle prominent issues in the automotive industry’s online disorder—focusing on activities that provoke group antagonism, hype negative topics, and carry out unstandardized testing. The campaign also lawfully and in accordance with relevant procedures dealt with a number of illegal and noncompliant accounts.

Among them, automotive vertical platforms such as “AutoHome” and “Pacific Automotive” carried out unstandardized testing projects including “winter testing” and “intelligent driving horizontal comparisons.” They also released automobile test-related information that unfairly generalized conclusions through relevant accounts, misleading the public about their understanding of areas such as automotive product quality and functional performance. The accounts involved have had enforcement actions taken against them in accordance with the law and relevant procedures.

It is worth noting that, in addition to the compliance test, AutoHome’s operating situation is also not optimistic.

According to the financial performance announcement for the fourth quarter of 2025 and the full year, released by AutoHome on March 5, 2025 full-year revenue was RMB 6.452 billion, down 8.35% year over year. The company recorded attributable net profit of RMB 1.385 billion, down 14.47% from the prior year.

Of this, media services contributed revenue of RMB 1.153 billion, down 24.27% year over year, mainly due to a decrease in advertising spending by fuel-car manufacturers caused by declining fuel-car sales. At the same time, the company’s income from lead services was RMB 2.709 billion, down 13.61% compared with 2024, mainly attributable to a reduction in the number of paid dealers and the decline in dealers’ average revenue brought about by expansion into lower-tier cities.

The financial report shows that in 2025, AutoHome’s online marketing and other business revenue reached RMB 2.589 billion, up 8.77% year over year, becoming the only segment with positive growth.

Facing the decline in revenue from its traditional core business, AutoHome explored new businesses in the second half of 2025 and launched its in-house e-commerce platform—AutoHome Mall. On the first day of the mall’s launch, it welcomed 15 major mainstream auto brands to the platform, including Leapmotor, BYD, and Avatr.

Liu Chi, Chairman of AutoHome’s Board and Chief Executive Officer, pointed out that 2025 is the first year of AutoHome’s transformation from an automotive information platform into a one-stop automotive ecosystem services platform. In the face of profound changes in the auto industry, the company will focus on two key initiatives: on the content side, it will continuously strengthen the development of high-quality content, improve the ecosystem for creators, and enhance the capabilities of new media communication; on the service side, it will accelerate the construction of an online-and-offline integrated service system, building a more efficient and convenient end-to-end whole-chain automotive ecosystem service experience for users and industry partners.

As of March 24, AutoHome’s share price was HKD 34.8, and its latest market value was HKD 17.73 billion.

According to Tianyancha information, Beijing AutoHome Information Technology Co., Ltd., the domestic company of AutoHome, was established in 2006 and has 892 Tianyan Risk-related information entries.

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