EHang Holdings Ltd (EH) 2020 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to EHang Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Earnings Conference Call.

(Operator Instructions).

At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

Later, we'll conduct a question-and-answer and instructions will follow at that time.

As a reminder, we are recording today's conference.

If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

Now I will turn the call over to Julia Qian, Managing Director of The Blueshirt Group Asia.

Ms. Qian, please proceed.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you all for joining us on today's conference call to discuss the company's financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2020.

We released the results earlier today.

The press release is available on the company's website as well as for our newswire services.

On the call with me today are Mr. Huazhi Hu, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Edward Xu, Chief Strategy Officer; and Mr. Richard Liu, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. 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 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 does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

Please note that in today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measurement for comparison purpose only.

Our GAAP results and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release.

Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all the figures mentioned during the conference call are in Chinese RMB.

With that, let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Huazhi Hu.

Mr. Hu will speak in Chinese, and then our CSO, Edward Xu, will translate his comments into English.

Please go ahead, Mr. Hu.

(foreign language)

[Interpreted] Thank you, Mr. Hu.

Now I'm glad to translate Mr. Hu's remarks into English.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you for joining our earnings conference call today.

In the unusual year of 2020, our management team and I appreciate the efforts and the support of our employees, partners and investors.

Today, I would like to take this opportunity to tell more about EHang.

Since our founding, many people have asked me about the vision of EHang.

Today, I would like to elaborate our mission, vision and our strategy so that you can understand EHang better.

In my mind, EHang will become an air mobility service provider of the integrated door-to-door air transportation products for individuals.

EHang is a technological innovation-driven air mobility service provider committed to lead the next-generation of autonomous Urban Air Mobility.

Our mission is to enable safe, autonomous and eco-friendly air mobility services for everyone.

In the future, we will build EHang into a "Tesla in the air", allowing people to use EHang's air taxi services as easily as using Uber today and to enjoy the convenient door-to-door air transportation.

Similarly, our air logistics services will also provide convenience for people's lives.

We have been executing our strategy based upon our unwavering mission and vision, as well as our long-term view of the future transportation industry and in-depth understanding of EHang's first mover advantages.

We believe that with the rapid development of autonomous driving, autonomous flying services will become the focus of the transport sector and compel a price of the market.

In the long run, a function of OEM/manufacturers will be integrated and consolidated by the service providers.

For example, Waymo and Nuro, 2 innovative transport enterprises, are redefining the transport sector by integrating software, hardware and services.

The UAM industry is promising, which is expected to reach USD 1.5 trillion by 2040, according to the research report published by Morgan Stanley.

We believe with our decades of experiences in technology and product innovation, we will continue to be a leader and take significant share of the market.

Our technology accumulation and product innovation in the past decade gives us full confidence and ability to achieve this goal.

Now I will tell you more about the development path of EHang following the 3 steps of technologies, rules and services.

First of all, in terms of product research and development, EHang's vision for future air mobility is based upon 3 original concepts.

First, autonomous flying, second full redundancy system; and third, cluster management.

So far, EH184 and EH216 have completed the full redundancy designs of the battery system, speed control system, power system, battery management system, flight control system and navigation system.

Whenever any system fails, the backup system will take effect and the aircraft can continue to fly without falling, which is totally different from the ordinary drones.

We have carried out the flight tests for more than 5 years, including a number of extreme tests and flight tests in harsh conditions, such as the full power maneuverability tests, heavy snow and fog tests, high-altitude maneuverability tests, seaside salt haze environment tests, manned typhoon tests, electromagnetic and vibration tests, etc.

Here, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to our partners who have been with us along the way.

Thanks to their strong support, we successfully completed the first step of our vision in 2017.

At the same time, since our inception, we have been committed to building and optimizing our systems.

We firmly believe that EHang's AAVs are the pioneering new type of transportation.

Our products are not developed exclusively for pilots but for everyone who doesn't need to go through rigorous pilot training and testing.

Our AAVs are automated and operated by a complete set of systems.

"Autonomous flying" is the soul of our products.

We deeply understand that aircrafts can't fly around without rules, which will have an adverse impact on the future air traffic system.

Therefore, back in 2017, we established our own command-and-control center for AAVs, which was also the first of its kind in the world.

Since then, we have constantly optimized the cluster management technologies.

We believe that cluster management is also an important guarantee for future flight operations.

Without cluster management of the command-and-control center, autonomous aerial vehicles will no longer be safe and reliable, and will cause huge difficulties to manage among aircrafts.

Cluster management technologies have laid a good foundation for the whole system of our unmanned airport and derived an incredibly valuable concept, i.e., the Aerial Media performance services and the logistics port for unmanned aerial vehicles.

More importantly, EHang is a company in the global UAM field that is the first to carry out UAM flight tests, and conducted the most tests widely in this area.

Together with our partners, we have carried out numerous test flights in countries such as China, South Korea, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, UAE, Qatar, etc.

Every time our flying vehicles take off, it attracts countless attentions in the local area, giving people a glimpse of the ease of transportation in the future.

In addition, as early as 2017, we cooperated with the CAAC to jointly develop the standards for unmanned air traffic.

From the first test flight permit in 2018 to the trial operation approval of the EH216 for aerial logistics, and to the official acceptance of our application of the airworthiness certification for EH216 passenger-grade AAVs in the last year, the CAAC has been closely working with us along our growth.

Just 2 days ago, we held the airworthiness certification meeting with the national expert group from CAAC, which means we have officially entered the certification stage.

We are steadily moving forward to obtaining the airworthiness certificate of EH216.

This is the second step for us to gradually complete our vision since 2018.

Elon Musk once said in the wake of its success in auto-driving, Tesla will stop selling cars and start to provide autonomous travel services.

EHang understood from the earliest days the best way for offering autonomous air mobility is to provide autonomous air travel services and has strove to realize this vision.

Today, we are opening up a new chapter and about to embark on a new journey of becoming the world's leading UAM service provider.

This will be our most anticipated third step of EHang vision.

In this fiscal year of 2020, the future transportation we envisioned is getting closer and EHang has made numerous breakthroughs and achievements in many fronts, including products, systems and production capacity.

Based upon the EH216 passenger grade AAVs, we launched the EH216F and EH216L models to actively explore application scenarios for AAVs in the fields of aerial firefighting and large-load logistics transportation.

In terms of the development of UAM network, our EH216 passenger-grade AAVs have the ability to carry out air transportation in the city due to its lightless and flexibility.

In order to meet the needs of longer ranges, we are about to launch a new model (VT30) with a flight range of more than 300 kilometers as a supplement to the inter-city UAM network.

Combined with existing EH216, VT30 will fulfill the inter-city traffic connection within the city clusters, making the future UAM network stronger and more complete.

On the product development front, I would like to share with you 3 breakthroughs.

First of all, I'm very pleased to introduce for the first time the development progress of our VT series of medium-to-long-range intelligent aircrafts.

As early as 2 years ago, we laid out the strategic development road map of the VT series of products, in the order of size are VT10, VT20 and VT30.

VT series is a hybrid VTOL design that configurate both pure electric multirotor and fixed wing.

VT30 is designed for carrying passengers in VT series.

Between the choices of safety and efficiency, we chose safety as our first priority.

VT30 products have advanced fault detection capability, which can ensure that if the aircraft fails during flight, it can quickly and automatically switch to vertical takeoff and landing form, which can bring the passengers to the ground safely as soon as possible.

After a considerable period of time of demonstration and exploration, we did not choose the tiltrotor design.

No matter multirotor or tiltrotor cannot have a full redundancy capability in all flight modes, while the hybrid design can ensure a complete flight redundancy capability in all flight modes.

Redundancy for safety must be the first priority for autonomous aerial vehicles.

Other designs like the tiltrotor will definitely add additional complexity to the operation system, leading to the increase of the failure rate.

In order to ensure certain level of flight efficiency for our hybrid design, we make lightweight for the overall design of the aircraft and the overall weight of the aircraft is within 700 kilograms, so that aircraft not only has good backup robustness, but also has good long-range flight capability.

We noticed that some media previously reviewed that we are about to release a new product with a flying distance of 400 kilometers.

I believe it refers to our VT30.

But the media picture is actually a picture of the transition product VT2.5 for its patent application, rather than the picture of the VT30.

We plan to perform trial flights of VT30 in open areas in Northwestern China in the near future.

Please look out to our official release of the VT30 in which the specific aircraft shape, design and related technical parameters will be published.

VT20 and the VT10 are another 2 multi-purpose small aircrafts of the same type in our VT series.

In the early stage, VT20 participated in the flight verification of VTOL flight systems and other work.

Now it also formed a mature product and has entered the stage of small batch production.

Its flight time with payload is more than 3 hours and the flight speed is between [70 to 120 kilometer per hour] (corrected by company after the call).

In the future, it will undertake the flight route survey and planning for VT30 fully autonomous flights.

It is an indispensable product in the future UAM infrastructure planning process and can also be used for UAV applications in our Smart City command-and-control centers.

Moreover, we will release the EH216M, a manual pilot model of EH216 AAV.

The EH216M is expected to obtain a special airworthiness certificate in the experimental category from CAAC in May of this year.

As a sports electric vehicle, the EH216M is with a similar control systems as a traditional helicopter, but simpler and more reliable, and it can switch to autopilot mode with one click for all-around safety protection.

In 2019, we got the certificate of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) fence issued to us by the CAAC.

Under the protection of our UAS fence, one-click takeoff and landing will make the flight safer.

In the future, we plan to work with our partners to establish a fight experience park with UAS fence so that everyone can realize a dream of enjoying the fun with manual flights under safety protection.

In addition, we have made significant progress in the AAV logistics port that we collaborate with our partners in Hezhou in Guangxi province of China.

Our FlyShark series of fixed wing AAVs designed for aerial logistics have completed a large number of flight tests there, realizing a fleet of fully autonomous flights from take-off to landing from point A to point B. Meanwhile, the Hezhou AAV logistics port is expected to become the first unmanned airport with no operators in the whole system operation except for the system maintenance personnel, and all aircrafts will be operated automatically by the command-and-control system.

We have also made remarkable progress in production and R&D.

Our new production facility in Yunfu will officially start production in June this year.

The structure of EHang's products is mainly made of composite materials and the production of its composite products is traditionally a manual process.

We will continue to invest in Yunfu facility in the next 2 years and gradually upgrade to fully automated production lines to further improve the product quality and consistency.

We will expand our R&D base for intelligent aircrafts in our Guangzhou headquarters and believe that more innovative products will be born here.

Future development path.

We will achieve our strategic goals through the following 4 strategic paths.

First, we will remain focused on R&D capabilities for our passenger-grade and logistics products.

With the development of EH216 series of short-to-medium-range flagship aircrafts and VT series of long-range aircrafts as the core and the service operation as the orientation, we will continue to strengthen our technologies and increase the bar and focus on improving product safety, flight duration performance, and passenger and the cargo capacity.

Second, build a first-class talent team as an operator.

According to the established strategic positioning as an urban air mobility platform operator, we will gradually upgrade from "a manufacturer to an operation service provider" and recruit the top-level talents for transportation operation.

Third, we will concentrate our resources in our core business and gradually divest the Air Media, Smart City management and other businesses which are less relevant to our air mobility business.

However, our efforts to upgrade to an "operation service provider" need a smooth transition period.

These businesses will be gradually outsourced to our partners in the future, but we expect no material impact in revenues of related businesses.

Last, we will continue to expand our trial UAM operational bases and air mobility scenarios such as tourism, transportation, logistics, etc.

and actively build a number of trial operational bases domestically and overseas to carry out operational services.

At the same time, we will continue to accelerate the completion of compliance work such as airworthiness certificate and transportation certificate.

In 2021, we will focus more on R&D of AAVs for passengers and logistics.

As our new production facility continues to be completed and put into production, we expect that in 2021, we will produce a larger number of intelligent passenger/logistics aircrafts.

This year, we will gradually carry out air passenger and the logistics trial operation services.

In addition to selling AAVs to our existing customers and partners, we will also use some AAVs for trial operation services.

At the same time, we will actively carry out trial operation services in more cities around the world.

On this basis, we will simultaneously disclose the relevant data of our operation services such as order volume of operational services, number of active users, service mileage and revenues, etc.

We are confident that EHang will become a leader in the UAM industry with our dedication and outstanding execution capability.

We believe we will make impact in the world and enable people to experience convenient and safe air mobility services in the near future.

Next, my colleagues will continue to provide more details.

Thank you.

Those were Mr. Hu's remarks.

Now let me elaborate on our strategy and plan.

Hello, this is Edward Xu, Chief Strategy Officer of EHang.

Based upon the Board decisions that consider the firm's long-term strategic goal, EHang's business model will experience a gradual transition in 2021, from a pure equipment sales model towards operation platform model.

This decision is a result of the Board's deep thoughts and discussions that thoroughly considered the following conditions.

First, to be a UAM platform operator is the ultimate goal of EHang.

As a world leading UAM firm, we are dedicated to providing comprehensive and effective solutions.

To this end, we have not only built the most advanced AAVs such as EH216, but also grasped the key relevant technologies such as cluster management so that we are able to operate multiple remote AAVs simultaneously through our centralized platform based upon predetermined and fixed routes.

This whole system enables a seamless integration of AAV manufacturing and operations, laying a solid foundation for us to become a UAM platform operator.

Different from some peer companies, our business does not only cover the designing and the manufacturing of equipment (AAVs) alone, but also system-wide solutions for real operations, including route planning, standard setting, 4G/5G communications, etc.

We are building a large eco-system for UAM which is compatible with existing systems for civil aviation.

Therefore, we have positioned ourselves as a UAM platform operator from the very beginning of our IPO.

We believe this is our ultimate choice.

Second, safety is our top priority.

As the delivery volume of EH216 continues to increase, it adds responsibilities on the customer side to ensure operational safety.

For a highly innovative product as such with no precedence, it demands high level of safety standards for daily operations.

Therefore, we believe it is critical for us to take full and direct control of daily operations of EH216 AAVs to ensure 100% safety.

Third, the timing for EHang 216 commercialization is opportune.

We have conducted over 10,000 flights of EH216 AAVs in the past 3 to 4 years and have accumulated considerable amount of real data.

Based upon the latest results of the recent communications with the CAAC, we see significant progress in airworthiness certification for EH216.

We are hopeful in achieving meaningful progress in 2021 towards the final stages in certification.

This will open the door for further commercialization of EH216 that enables an upgraded version of UAM operations.

Therefore, we should make sufficient preparations for large-scale operations in future.

To support this important strategic initiative and also fulfill some customer orders in 2021, we are aiming to produce approximately 250 units of EH216 in the year, which will be a new record for the company once achieved.

Finally, attractive outlook for UAM operations.

More importantly, we see a highly attractive outlook for an upgraded model of UAM operations based upon our fully autonomous aerial vehicles.

Different from the conventional models of civil/general aviation, our model ensures a higher level of safety, service quality and profitability, but lower levels of operational costs.

Our financial analysis shows highly attractive investment returns with a short payback period for our equipment versus the conventional civil/general aviation models.

Considering the benefits of a large sharing platform built upon self-owned fleet at a relatively lower cost, we expect a higher degree of equipment utilization and return profiles.

Considering various factors, we have planned a "100 Air Mobility Route Initiative" by selecting 100 meaningful flight routes for trial operations within China.

By accumulating more operating data and experiences, we will be more prepared to launch large-scale commercialization activities.

Meanwhile, we are planning to release operating data such as flight routes, flight sorties and passenger volumes, etc.

as mentioned by Mr. Hu.

I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Mr. Richard Liu, to provide the financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2020.

Richard, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you, Edward, and hello, everyone.

Before I go into details, please note that all numbers presented are in RMB and are for the fourth quarter of 2020, unless stated otherwise.

All percentage changes are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise specified.

Detailed analysis is contained in our earnings press release, which is available on our IR website.

I'm going to highlight some of the key points here.

In Q4 2020, total revenues were RMB 54.6 million, on par with total revenues of RMB 54.7 million in the same period of 2019.

Due to the resurgence of COVID-19 pandemic in the quarter, the total units of EH216 sold were 22 units versus 26 units in the same period in 2019, causing the revenue from air mobility solutions to decrease 10% year-over-year.

However, our revenue from aerial media solutions increased steadily, offsetting the decrease in air mobility and driving up our total revenues.

In full year of 2020, our total revenues increased 47.8% year-over-year, reaching RMB180 million.

We are pleased to maintain a robust annual revenue growth despite the pandemic impacts globally.

Adjusted gross profit in Q4, excluding share-based compensation expenses, amounted to RMB34.8 million, this led to adjusted gross margin of 63.8%, which was 3.1 percentage points higher than that of last year and the highest quarterly adjusted gross margin in the company's history.

Adjusted gross profit for the full year 2020 was RMB108.6 million, up 51.7% from RMB71.6 million in 2019.

Adjusted gross margin for the full year 2020 was 60.3%, up 1.5 percentage points from 58.8% in 2019 and also the highest annual adjusted gross margin.

This reflected the competitive strengths of the company.

And the increase was mainly due to a favorable revenue mix with a greater proportion of revenues from sales of higher-margin models of EH216 AAVs.

Adjusted operating expenses, excluding share-based compensation expenses, increased by 50.5% to RMB47.2 million and as a percentage of total revenues, was 86.5% as compared to 57.3% in Q4 2019.

We mainly increased expenditures in R&D of new models, including both passenger-grade and non-passenger-grade AAV models and related operating systems with enhanced functionalities.

As a result, our adjusted operating loss in Q4 was RMB10.6 million, compared to an adjusted operating profit of RMB3.8 million in Q4 2019.

Adjusted operating loss as a percentage of total revenues was negative 19.5% compared to adjusted operating margin of 6.9% in Q4 2019.

With adjusted operating loss in Q4, our adjusted net loss was RMB12.3 million, compared with adjusted net income of RMB2.9 million in Q4 2019.

For the full year of 2020, our adjusted net loss was RMB37.2 million, compared with adjusted net loss of RMB31.9 million in 2019.

Now let's turn to the balance sheet and cash flow.

We ended the quarter with RMB189.4 million of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments.

The accounts receivable balance of RMB179.4 million have been reduced to RMB103.1 million with subsequent collections of RMB76.3 million as of March 31, 2021, representing 42.5% of the above balance have been collected.

Together with the private investment of USD40 million in late January, it is expected that the company has adequate funding to support the operations in the next 12 to 24 months at least.

Now let's turn to the business outlook.

Our business is experiencing a gradual transition into a more operation-driven model.

Given our ultimate strategic goal is to build a UAM platform operator company, we view now is the right time to accelerate this process for better commercialization.

Specifically, we are planning to launch a "100 Air Mobility Route Initiative" in China from 2021 and onward.

We believe the time is opportune as we're getting into the final stages of airworthiness certification of our EH216 AAVs.

As a result, we expect the annual revenues in 2021 to range between RMB130 million and RMB180 million.

That concludes our prepared remarks.

Let's now open the call for questions.

Operator, please go ahead.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Tim Hsiao from Morgan Stanley.

Edward and Richard, I have 2 quick questions.

I'm sure like the management team have already touched on this topic for several times.

And according to the company's announcements that we did see some progress in terms of the regulatory breakthrough and with further collaboration with the CAAC certification team.

But again, how should that translate into more details about the timing of official step special with this certificate when we can get that?

And with that, how should we think about the potential order wins upon the obtainment of the certificates?

My second question is about a competitive landscape because we saw several players are making or plan to make inroads into this market.

And will that change the industry dynamics meaningfully and risk EHang's dominance and our current collaboration with the government at the moment?

Well, thank you, Tim.

This is Edward.

Let me take your questions.

So your first question regarding the type certificate progress.

So it was very great progress we have made 2 days ago with a special meeting with delegates from CAAC.

They are very high-level senior members from all over the country, and representing different sub bureaus of the CAAC.

It is actually the kickoff meeting, and the CAAC officials highly recognized our progress.

And so the message here is quite optimistic.

However, I cannot tell you the exact timing of when we can get the certification.

But based upon our communication so far, we are quite confident about this issue.

And about the potential orders you mentioned, I think, yes, definitely, this will break the last hurdle, our last bottleneck from the regulation perspective, so which will lay a very good foundation for our future commercialization of our products.

And so that is definitely a very good message.

And your second question regarding the competitive dynamics, right?

So we understand that nowadays, we see quite a number of companies who are making their own products including some auto companies as well.

However, we are quite confident about our technology, which created this entry barrier from the technological perspective.

As we mentioned earlier, we are not only a company who focus on designing and manufacturing the vehicle itself.

We are creating a whole system.

We are building a platform that is a very key difference, which set us from all the other peers.

And we believe that this will definitely give us a first-mover advantage that we are building a platform and setting the standards.

And right now, working with the CAAC delegates, another major task is to set the standard for the certification.

So we are working very closely with CAAC officials in setting the new standards, and we are very proud of that.

And so that is also very different perspective, and it makes us very unique in this industry.

So we are quite confident about our technology, about our system and our whole idea of future UAM.

I hope this answers your question.

And if you have any further questions, please let me know.

Our next question comes from Vincent Yu, Needham & Company.

I have 2 questions and one follow-up question.

My 2 question is on the order and clients.

The first question is on order book.

Can management go into more details on our existing order book and the split between orders that we have received basically the buying deposits versus the ones that are just pure intentional contracts.

And my second question on the clients is that previously, we have been working with some touring sites according to what I remember.

So are we expanding our client base like for example EH216F, are we expanding to government?

And what's our current client base looks like?

And my third question is a follow-up on the timing of the airworthiness certificates.

We totally understand it's hard to predict the exact timing.

But they are very rough kind of prediction, let's say, midyear or by the year-end or next year?

What kind of rough timing that we can predict?

I will take your first question.

Our order backlog is on a running basis.

So right now, at this moment, there are roughly around 100 units.

And in terms of international versus domestic, actually, a majority of this are from within China, as you can imagine, given the still ongoing global pandemic impact.

And about 40% with the deposit of prepayments.

Vincent, this is Edward here.

I'll answer your second question about the EH216F, right?

So this is specially designed AAV for firefighting purpose.

However, we are still in the process of obtaining the last certification from the government, and there are 2 items which we need to do by conducting some experiments to prove the capability and also obtaining final certification from the government.

And the client base, we will generally be the firefighting department and the emergency department from different provincial government.

And so far, we received very positive feedback from the government.

However, we still need to go through the certification and so that we are able to enter the national purchase catalog so that the government can place order for that.

And regarding your last question about the timing of the type certificate.

We believe that as I mentioned, we cannot predict the exact timing.

But based upon the message from the government officials, it is quite optimistic, we should say.

And also, the whole process should be a gradual process, which means that towards the final certification, there could be some several milestones during the whole process, which we expect to achieve and to get recognized, I think during which we should be able to share the news with the market in the next 6 to 12 months about the progress.

And so that is what we can say now.

We are approaching the end of the conference.

If you have further questions, please contact us by e-mail or phone after the conference call.

Let me turn the call back to Mr. Liu for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating on today's call.

And for all your support.

We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress.

All right.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call.

Thank you for participating.

You may all disconnect.