He Xiaopeng
Analyst · Tim Hsiao with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead
Hi, everyone. I am He Xiaopeng. In the third quarter of 2022, XPeng delivered 29,570 electric vehicles, a year-over-year increase of 15%. Cumulative deliveries in the first three quarters of 2022 totaled 98,553 electric vehicles, representing a growth of 75% year-over-year. Frankly, we are going through a very challenging period in pursuing our long-term goals. In response, we recently conducted an in-depth strategic review and implemented organizational restructure. The competition for smart EVs is similar to a marathon. I believe that only strong players with core technologies, well-rounded capabilities and the ability to monetize from both hardware and software will eventually win in the long run. To enhance our product competitiveness and boost cells, we will simplify configurations while improving our hardware and software products attractiveness to incorporate customers’ voices and needs. As market competition intensifies, we will sharpen our marketing to highlight the great value in our industry-leading smart and electrification technologies and further enhance our branding, sales and service capabilities. I would also like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our customers and shareholders for their valuable suggestions regarding these areas for improvement. Within the new organizational structure, I will focus on XPeng’s strategy, product planning and R&D. My goal will be to drive organizational change and upgrades, ensure customer values is reflected in our entire product development process, including design, R&D, sales and service holistically making our business operation more concentrated and efficient. In a recent strategic review, I am more convinced that the adoption of smart EVs will accelerate in the second half of 2023. We will unwaveringly invest in the R&D of autonomous driving and smart cockpit technologies to strive to reduce the cost of these technologies to our customers while ensuring that customers’ needs and preferences are at the center of our innovation to enhance our smart products’ competitiveness and profitability as well as our customer satisfaction. At the same time, the platform-based approach for our vehicles and powertrain will improve the efficiency of our research and development and will help consistently reduce our R&D expenses and BOM costs through technologies. Besides, our ecosystem affiliates, XPeng Aero HT and XPeng Robotics have both raised funds recently and are now well equipped to operate independently. As a result, I will be spending much less of my time on our ecosystem affiliates operations. Our Co-Founder, Mr. [indiscernible] will resign as an Executive Director of the Board of Directors to focus more on products. In addition, we are restructuring our brand and marketing team through a strengthened team and more targeted content, I believe will succeed in addressing the key factors that affect consumers’ purchase decisions in the most sought-after channels and across a broad range of customer demographics, paving the way for more powerful brand awareness of XPeng in our products. Leveraging our dedicated EV platforms with a focus on architecture and powertrain, we expect to increase our R&D efficiency, enhance our cost control measures and improve supply chain management. In line with our mission, we have invested in three powerful EV platforms over the past few years, including our fully established E platform and our third-generation F platform and H platform, both of which are expected to be mass produced next year. Together, these advanced platforms form a solid technology foundation to support our product upgrades and iterations. Our core technologies, including our powertrain system, advanced driver assistance systems, chassis and electrical and electronic architecture will be shared across multiple vehicles we are developing as much as possible. As a result, the required R&D cycle time and expenditure for each new product will be reduced, while the vehicle software and hardware quality will be more stable. We have also adjusted the organizational structure for our EV product management team accordingly. Each EV platform will be led by a senior product manager in charge of product development across the complete product cycle from design and development to sell, forming a market-led closed-loop system to improve user experience in sales. Mass deliveries of the G9, our flagship SUV equipped with our most advanced technologies, commenced at the end of October. All of the G9s are equipped with an 800-volt high-voltage platform that enables excellent driving range. It’s charging speed also outperforms all the other EV models in the market. The increasing market recognition of G9’s outstanding capabilities has marked XPeng’s leadership in not only smart technology, but also electrification. Such a reputation is not only popularized in China but also overseas. Despite near-term challenges brought by COVID-related restrictions and production ramp up, we are confident that the G9 will soon rank among the top three in terms of monthly sales volume in a battery electric SUV segment priced above RMB300,000 and draw closer to number one next year as we continue to enhance our brand recognition. We believe G9’s sales ramp up will drive future sales volume and pull it out of the trial we experienced in October. Moreover, beginning in the first quarter of next year, we will successfully launch three new vehicle models, which will further strengthen our product competitiveness. We also expect consistent improvement in our marketing capabilities to make our subsequent product launches successful. As we continue to rollout new products and technologies, coupled with technology differentiation of our next-generation full-scenario ADAS products, we are confident that we will achieve a significant increase in sales volume and average selling price, gaining a revenue growth in 2023 that exceeds the industry average and increasing our market share. Since the third quarter of this year, we have made significant progress in the mass production of autonomous driving technology. We continue cultivating consumers’ trust in and willingness to purchase our product with best-in-class ADAS software. On September 17, we debut our City NGP pilot program in Guangzhou. In urban traffic scenarios, which are significantly more complex than highway scenarios, XPeng’s P5 took the lead in delivering the best-in-class driver safety and driving experience at a much lower hardware cost. We are accelerating the development of our next-generation full-scenario advanced driver assistance product, XNGP and plan to release its major functions to several dozen cities in the third quarter of 2023. In my view, the upcoming release of XNGP will represent an inflection point where smart driver assistance software, becomes a must-have product with high-frequency usage. We are also pleased to see that a high proportion of current G9 orders are for the max version that features XNGP ahead of the XNGP’s OTA rollout. We look forward to enabling our cost competitive XNGP next year in more models. Furthermore, we believe XNGP’s hardware costs will have the opportunity to be reduced as our technology advances and become significantly lower than that of our peers. Driven by strong brand awareness of our product and cost competitiveness, we are confident that XNGP will rapidly gain widespread adoption nationwide. On October 31, the XPeng G9 obtaining the Guangzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test permit making XPeng G9 the first unmodified mass-produced vehicle to qualify for autonomous driving tests on China’s public roads. With the parallel development of our advanced driver assistance system, XNGP and robotaxi capabilities alongside a closed-loop data and a complementary approach in software iterations, we plan to be the first to realize autonomous driving with cost effective mass-produced vehicles. As we strive to bring our smart technologies and electrification technologies into commercialization, we firmly believe in the value proposition that our in-house developed, industry leading technologies bring to our customers as well as our commercial value for our enterprise. We are open to opportunities for strategic cooperation and technology collaborations globally. Regarding cash liquidity, our current cash amounts to over RMB40 billion. We have become increasingly aware of the importance for automakers to maintain steady growth in adversity and not just in prosperity. Therefore, we will implement prudent cost control initiatives over the next few quarters and next few years to improve operational efficiency and streamline our investment projects. Building on our more focused R&D strategy and vehicle and technology platforms that can be applied across different vehicle models, we plan to rollout future products at a lower R&D cost. A stronger product portfolio and internal organizational restructuring will also help significantly improve our sales efficiency. Furthermore, thanks to our early investment in our production capabilities, our CapEx needs will significantly decrease over the next couple of years compared with 2022. Therefore, we are confident that our cash position of RMB40 billion will support our business growth in the coming years. Also, our cash flow will substantially improve as our product sales grow. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we will focus on mitigating the impact of COVID-related restrictions in China and making internal adjustments for our medium and long-term development. Our November deliveries are estimated to reach at least 5,800 units mainly due to the impact of the G9 production ramp up. We are trying our best to expedite deliveries of our order backlog. In December, our deliveries will rebound significantly month-over-month. We expect to deliver a total of 20,000 to 21,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2022 and generate revenue between RMB4.8 billion to RMB5.1 billion. We will accelerate internal organizational adjustments and management upgrades in the coming quarters. We’re confident that we will rank among the top players in the smart vehicle industry in the medium to long-term. Thank you everyone. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to our VP of Finance, Mr. Dennis Lu, to discuss our financial performance for the third quarter of 2022.