CBAK Energy Technology Inc (CBAT) 2024 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the CBAK Energy Technology's first-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, we are recording today's call. (Operator Instructions)

Now I will turn the call over to Thierry Li, CFO and Secretary of the Board of CBAK Energy. Mr. Li, please proceed.

Thank you, operator. And hello, everyone. Welcome to CBAK Energy's first-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Yunfei Li, Chief Executive Officer of CBAK Energy; myself, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary of the Board; and Jennifer, our interpreter. Our General Engineer, Mr. Xiujun Tian will join us for the Q&A section.

We released our results earlier today. The press release is available on the company's IR website at ir.cbak.com.cn, as well as from Newswire services. A replay of this call will also be available in a few hours in our IR website.

Before we continue, please note that today's discussions will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's actual results may be materially different from today's -- from the expectations expressed today.

Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's public filings with the SEC. The company doesn't assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable laws. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in USD.

With that, let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Yunfei Li. Mr. Li will speak in Chinese, and then we'll translate his comments into English. Go ahead, Mr. Li. (Spoken in foreign language)

(interpreted) Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our first-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. First, I would like to provide an overview of our performance in the first quarter. We are pleased to announce that we have commenced the year 2024 on a solid note with robust growth. In the first quarter, our battery business recorded revenues of $44.84 million, a remarkable increase of 51.5% compared to the same period of last year. This strong start sets a promising time for the year ahead.

While the (technical difficulty) faced significant downward pressure with many of our competitors experiencing declining gross margins and profits, our battery business continued to buck the trend and achieved rapid growth. Our company's strategic focus remains on the energy storage sector, especially at home energy storage and portable energy storage.

Consequently, our revenue from batteries used in electric vehicles declined to $0.48 million, now 73.6% year over year. Similarly, revenue from batteries used in light battery vehicles decreased by 23.3% to $1.51 million. On the other hand, our revenues from batteries used in energy storage applications grew tremendously to $42.85 million, an impressive increase of 66% year over year.

This strong growth in our energy storage business, coupled with orders from high-quality clients, has propelled improvement in our gross margins. In the first quarter, our battery business achieved a historic high gross margin of 41.2%, an increase of 30.3 percentage points compared to the same period of last year.

Meanwhile, net income from our battery business continued its upward trajectory from last year, reaching $11.68 million as of first quarter, significantly from $0.11 million in the same year of last year. This translates to a 107-fold increase and is equivalent to this segment's net income for the entire prior year.

Now let me delve into the specifics of our order demand. As of May 7, 2024, we have recorded approximately RMB327 million, or approximately $45.2 million in combined value of orders received but yet to be fulfilled across our major production facilities in Dalian, Nanjing, and Shaoxing.

Regarding our disclosed (inaudible) initiatives, as of May 7, 2024, our accumulated orders from Jinko Group, the largest manufacturer of scooters and electric tricycles for a total approximately RMB60.28 million, or approximately $8.2 million.

Our collaboration with PowerOak, a global leader in the portable energy storage technology and its subsidiary energy storage brand, Bluetti, reached approximately behind the RMB41.28 million or approximately $5.7 million.

Additionally, our [dealings] with Viessmann Group, one of Europe's top-three household energy storage suppliers and a leading European manufacturer of heating and cooling systems, amounted an impressive RMB1.11 billion or approximately $153 million. Simultaneously, our orders with Anker Innovations, one of the largest third-party accessory suppliers for 2024, including operators' products also reached RMB74.8 million or approximately $10.33 million.

Furthermore, our client base in the energy storage sector continues to expand. We have received substantial orders from several key clients, which will strengthen our global market presence and increase our market share. Among them is a European-based industrial client with whom we are currently discussing future collaborations and negotiating confidentiality agreements.

We hope to obtain the client's consent to update investors, shareholders, and the capital markets of the progress of these collaborations through official company channels.

Turning to our research and development efforts, we remain committed to exploring the diverse demand across various segments of the battery market while actively pursuing new product innovations. Our latest undertaking, the development of our larger cylindrical lithium-ion battery, the model 4014, is progressing smoothly.

By expanding the dimensions of our original cylindrical battery, this model elevates both energy density and cost effectiveness, providing clients with a more effective and safer solution. Our company plans to procure production equipment in the fourth quarter of 2024 and expect to formally launch mass production in the first quarter of next year. We believe that the introduction of this would significantly bolster our market expansion efforts and drive an increase in sales.

Meanwhile, our battery technology is gaining recognition in international markets that has attracted attention from some top companies in India as well as many foreign companies along the supply chain. In addition, several foreign giants have approached us about acquiring our large cylindrical battery manufacturing technology through technology transfer. We are currently conducting a comprehensive evaluation and considering the possibility of transferring or licensing our battery technology in certain markets in the future.

(Technical difficulty) We speak to all comments to be used in the energy storage market. We will continue to strengthen our technology, R&D, and innovation in energy storage to meet the needs of various customer groups and the growing demand for energy. Furthermore, we have observed increasing interest in sodium-ion battery production and application among battery factories and downstream customers in Europe and the United States.

As one of the top -- as one of the first companies in the world to achieve mass production of large cylindrical sodium batteries, we are very excited about this trend. We are also in talks with several industrial investors and world-class investment funds regarding separate financing for our sodium-ion battery project, aiming to promote sodium-ion battery development independently of the lithium battery segment in the future.

Now let me turn the call over to our CFO, Thierry Li, who will provide the details on our financial performance.

Thank you, Mr. Yunfei Li. And thanks, everyone, for making time to join our earnings conference call today. We are delighted to report strong first-quarter results in March by sustainable growth and increased profitability.

Total net revenues increased by 38.7% year over year, while net revenues from our battery business saw a significant uplift of 51.5% year over year. In addition, the gross margin jumped to 31.9% from 6.9% a year ago with the gross margin of our battery business surging 30.3 percentage points year over year to 41.2%. As a result, our bottom line turned positive with a net income of $9.6 million and a net income from the battery business of $11.7 million, positive for the third consecutive quarter.

We believe that we will be able to achieve a net income from the battery business of RMB220 million or approximately $30.5 million to RMB250 million or approximately $34.6 million for the full year of 2024. In addition, (inaudible) our independently operated subsidiary that supplies leading battery materials, also experienced a breakeven or incurred only slight losses in this year.

There is another exciting news we want to share with you. We have [garnered] attention from multiple institutional investors. Currently, we are in the process of due diligence with these institutional investors for investment purpose.

While the progress of these transactions is uncertain due to the factors such as evaluations, ideally, we hope to complete private financing this year. Subsequently, we will provide updates to investors, shareholders, and the capital market on relevant developments through official channels of our company.

I will now provide an overview of our 2024 first-quarter financial results. In the interest of time, I will be presenting abbreviated highlights only. We encourage you to refer to our product our press release issued earlier today for complete details.

In the first quarter, our total net revenues increased by 38.7% year over year to $58.8 million. Net revenues from sales of batteries reached $44.8 million, a year over year increase of 51.5%. Our total gross profit grew 546.3% year over year to $18.8 million, resulting in a gross margin of 31.9% compared to 6.9% in the prior-year period.

Gross profit for the battery business increased by 474.4% year over year to $18.5 million, with gross margin climbing to 41.2% from 10.9% in the prior-year period. Our total operating income amounted to $10.3 million compared to an operating loss of $2.9 million in the prior-year period.

Net income attributable to shareholders of CBAK Energy was $9.8 million compared to a net loss of $1.4 million in the prior-year period. Net income from the battery business was $11.7 million compared to $0.1 million in the same period of 2023.

That concludes our prepared remarks. Let us now open the call for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

(Operator Instructions) Brian Lantier, Zacks Small Cap Research.

Good evening, gentlemen. Congratulations on a really impressive performance. If I can dive a little bit more into the gross margin, Thierry, is that a combination of factors here when you're signing the contracts, the pricing that you're achieving from the customers, and then the cost input falling over the last year? Or if you could just give me a little bit more color as to how you are able to achieve that gross margin improvement.

(Spoken in foreign language)

(interpreted) Okay, so thank you for your question. I'm going to explain. There are two main reasons behind this soaring gross margin. The first one is that if you compared with the other leading battery manufacturers in the Chinese market, the gross margin is around 20%. However, our margin is about 40%. That is double the average in the Chinese market.

Why? Well, on the one hand, it is because our product quality has been well recognized by some big customers from Europe and from the US, and these customers are the high-end customers. They value product quality over price, and we have been in cooperation with them for four to five years, and we received almost zero customer complaints from them.

That is a very good testimony at how well our product has been recognized by them. This is one of the reasons why they are willing to offer a good price to us. And then [as it completes], it is also because of the declining of the raw materials. Just as Brian just mentioned, yes, indeed, the cost of leasing covenants has declined substantially from the peak in 2022. So the reduction in the material cost has also contributed to the increase of our gross margin.

All right. Thank you very much.

Yes, just to clarify, the 20% gross margin for margin average is only for top players. If you're talking about medium-sized battery manufacturers, the gross margin is somewhere between 15% to 18%, something like that.

Great. Thank you very much. And if I could ask a question more on the overall market itself, anecdotally, looking at some of your customers' products, it looks like they are pushing a lot of their larger storage units for home storage and emergency storage system. I wonder how that impacts you and I guess the demand for cells. It seems like as each unit is requiring more cells, that will lead to additional purchases and higher volume. Is that a trend you're seeing as well, I guess, from your customers?

(Spoken in foreign language)

(interpreted) Yes, indeed, we observed the change in the market demand. And actually, we also witnessed an increasing order in the household storage projects. And just as we have announced in our media release, we have already have our production -- our strategic plans that focus on 46140, which represents a bigger size and bigger dimension of the lithium battery. And we believe that it will be able to fill the blank in the battery with a larger size.

And if we'll have a look at the other large cylindrical batteries like 26650, we have already achieved stable market production. And also, for 32140, we have already opened the market and receiving orders gradually. And then for 40140, we have already entered into the -- 46140, we've already entered into the B-type sample, a prototype B development stage.

So yes, indeed, we have this product strategic plan well in place already. And then we when we are making this plan, we are taking careful consideration of the market demand. We are ensuring that our production will match the market demand. And besides that, what I want to add is for 40140, it is predicted that we're going to start mass production in the first quarter of 2025. And then for 46140, we also have our plan in 2025.

Great. And the last question, if I could just maybe ask about the facility expansion and where you stand on reaching your goals of 5 gigawatts of production capacity, I guess, at the end of 2024.

(Spoken in foreign language)

Brian, I will directly respond to your question. I think you are correct. We are preparing the additional 5- or 6-gigawatt-hour capacity by the end of this year as we reported in our full-year 2023 earnings call. The first -- I think the large -- the first large factory in our Phase 2 Nanjing project is already [grouped].

So what we are doing right now is we are procuring the equipment, facility -- or we're procuring all those production equipment right now. The timeline runs very smooth, and we believe that all the equipment will be ready by the end of this year. So next year, first quarter, we will start the production. So this is the timeline. No change.

Great. Thank you for the update.

(Operator Instructions) Seeing no more questions in the queue. Let me turn the call back to Mr. Yunfei Li for closing remarks.

(interpreted) Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating in today's call and for your support. We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress.

Thank you all again. This concludes the call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.