理想汽車 (LI) 2022 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by for Li Auto's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). I'll now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Janet Zhang, Investor Relations Director of Li Auto. Please go ahead, Janet.

Thank you, Amber. Good evening and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Li Auto's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. The Company's financial and operating results were published in the press release earlier today and are posted on the Company's IR website.

On today's call we have our President, Mr. Kevin Yanan Shen and our CFO, Mr. Johnny Tie Li, to begin with prepared remarks. Our Founder and CEO, Mr. Xiang Li, will join for the Q&A discussion.

Before I continue, please be reminded that today's discussion 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 the views expressed today. Further information regarding risks and uncertainties is included in certain filings of the Company with US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required under applicable law. Please also note that Li Auto's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to Li Auto's press release, which contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures.

With that, I will now turn the call over to our President. Please go ahead, Kevin.

Thank you, Janet. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. In the first quarter of 2022, the EV boom continued. According to the China Passenger Car Association, or CPCA, retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China reached 1.07 million in the first quarter of 2022, representing a year-over-year increase of 146.6%. The EV's penetration rate climbed to a record high of 28.2% in March 2022.

As a leader in the new energy vehicle market, we are excited to be one of the driving forces behind the industry's continued innovation and evolution. Thanks to our Li ONE's outstanding features and the compelling appeal to family users, we delivered 31,716 Li ONEs during the quarter, amid industry-wide supply chain challenges, up 152.1% year-over-year and achieved a total revenue of RMB9.56 billion, 167.5% higher than the first quarter of 2021.

The past several months was undoubtedly a difficult period for all of us, given the headwinds caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We have been no exception to the supply chain disruptions and rising material and logistics costs that challenged the entire auto industry. Our Changzhou manufacturing base is located in the center of the Yangtze Delta region, which is home to over 80% of our parts suppliers, especially in the cities of Shanghai and Kunshan.

The COVID-19 resurgence in this area since late March has incapacitated some suppliers in Shanghai and Kunshan. Some of them completely shut down their production and delivery, making it impossible for us to maintain production after exhausting our parts inventory. This materially affected our production in April, resulting in delayed deliveries to our customers. As a result, we only completed 4167 deliveries in April.

In light of the encouraging signs of the recovery from the pandemic in the Yangtze Delta region, we expect our total deliveries in the second quarter of this year to be between 21,000 to 24,000 vehicles. We should note there are still uncertainties with respect to the pace of the recovery.

While we are doing everything in our power to increase our production and overcome supply chain constraints, aiming to shorten the delivery waiting time for Li ONE users while meeting all pandemic prevention and containment requirements from the government, to help offset the sharply rising raw material costs, particularly the battery costs, we raised the price of Li ONE by RMB11,800 effective 1 April this year.

Moving to the profitability, in the first quarter our gross margin remained robust at 22.6%. Our R&D expenses increased 167% year-over-year to RMB1.37 billion, accounting for over 14% of our total revenues as we continue to enhance our strategic investments in autonomous driving, intelligent cockpit and electrification.

The increase in R&D, together with our direct sales and servicing network expansion, resulted in a 151.5% increase in our operating expenses year-over-year. Despite the deliberate in expenses to drive growth, our net cash flow from operations was positive for the eighth consecutive quarter at RMB1.83 billion, thanks to our outstanding manufacturing and operational efficiency.

In addition to propelling growth, our expanding direct sales and servicing network serves as an important and efficient interface for us to gain insight into our users' needs and desires. We think like a user. This perspective informs and motivates us as we strive to continually please users with updated features, product designs and services.

As of 30 April 2022, we have 225 retail stores covering 106 cities and 292 servicing centers and Li Auto-authorized body and paint workshops operating in 211 cities. Going forward, we will continue to grow our sales network at a cadence that accommodates both of our objectives, to capture market demand and the risk related to the ongoing pandemic.

With respect to R&D, since we released our OTA 3.0 to introduce our full-stack NOA on 1 December last year and become the third automotive OEM globally to develop a full-stack self-developed NOA, more than 100,000 2021 Li ONE users have enjoyed NOA-assisted driving as of the end of April. We are pleased to see our self-development process contribute to the consistent improvement in our NOA's safety and functionalities.

Its penetration rate has reached to 61.3%, which means that 61.3% of our users utilize NOA on the highways once it's available. The data gathered from the NOA mileage in real-life driving scenarios will play a crucial role in our future ADAS development and facilitate our ultimate goal of fully autonomous driving.

The NVIDIA Orin-X chipset and the LiDAR on our next full-size SUV, the L9, will further improve our vehicles' autonomous driving capabilities. Our R&D efforts to develop our range extension system, chassis and domain controller in-house are also bearing fruit. These R&D trends, among others, will be unveiled in our second production model, the L9.

That leads us to our update on products. Our first model, Li ONE, has been a proven success, catering to the needs of families in China. After Li ONE emerged as one of the industry's best SUV choices for family users, we built on our strength and are getting ready to launch our second production model, the L9. Despite a few pandemic-related bumps in the road, we are forging ahead with our plan to commence the delivery of the L9 in the third quarter.

The L9 is a flagship SUV for family users, based on our new generation EREV platform, offering best-in-class combination of performance, safety and intelligence. As just mentioned, it features our fully self-developed range extension system, chassis control system and central vehicle domain controller, which empower its outstanding dynamic performance and drivability.

In keeping with our fundamental belief that safety should always be standard, not optional, every L9 is built to our strictest safety standards and comes equipped with our upgraded autonomous driving system, Li AD Max, capable of all-scenario NOA for enhanced driving safety and convenience.

The L9 also comes standard with first-class premium features such as the sumptuous seats, a high-performance audio system and an all-new three-dimensional interactive experience. Above all, the L9 aims to meet the needs of more family users and delight users by proactively satisfying desires that they may never knew exist.

Since we released the teaser information for the vehicle, we have received a great deal of positive customer feedback and we can't wait to deliver our L9 and amaze our users with all its features and benefits.

In parallel with our EREV development, we are also investing in R&D for next generation electric vehicle technology, including high C-rate battery, high-voltage platform and ultrafast charging technology, with the goal of building an end-to-end BEV and charging ecosystem that can support a driving range of more than 400 kilometers with only 10 minutes charging.

As a leader in the new energy vehicle industry, we are dedicated to leading the future of mobility. We are also making a positive impact on the environment of our society. On 19 April we released our first ESG report, which marks yet another step forward in our sustainability journey and underscores our resolve to operate responsibly.

In addition, we are pleased to report that our Class A ordinary shares were included in the Shenzhen- and Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect programs on 14 March and 25 April this year respectively. This allows us to access a broader investor base and share our growth trajectory and further success with users, partners and investors in mainland China via the financial market.

Looking forward, we will continue to create the right product for family users, persevering through challenges with a laser focus on operational and financial efficiency, propelling progress and inspiring happiness along the way.

With that, I would like to turn it over to our CFO, Johnny, for a closer look at our financial performance. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kevin. Hello, everyone. I will now go over some of our financial results for the first quarter of 2022. To be mindful of the length of this call, I will address our financial highlights here and encourage you to refer to our earnings press release which is posted online for additional details.

Total revenues in the first quarter of 2022 were RMB9.56 billion, or US$1.51 billion, representing an increase of 167.5% from RMB3.58 billion in the first quarter of 2021. This included RMB9.31 billion, or US$1.47 billion, of vehicle sales in the first quarter of 2022, an increase of 168.7% from the first quarter of last year.

The increase in vehicle sales over the first quarter of 2021 was mainly attributable to the increase in vehicle deliveries in the first quarter of 2021. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, total revenues and vehicle sales decreased 10% and 10.3% respectively, primarily due to the decrease in vehicle deliveries in the first quarter of 2022.

Revenues from other sales and services were RMB253.4 million, or US$40 million, in the first quarter of 2022, representing an increase of 127.72% from RMB111.5 million in the first quarter of 2021 and an increase of 3.6% from RMB244.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2021.

The increase in revenue from other sales and services over the first quarter of 2022 was mainly attributable to the increased sales of charging stalls, accessories and services in line with higher accumulated vehicle sales.

Cost of sales in the first quarter of 2022 was RMB7.4 billion, or US$1.17 billion, representing an increase of 150.1% year-over-year and a decrease of 10.2% quarter-over-quarter.

Gross profit in the first quarter of 2022 was RMB2.16 billion, or US$341.3 million, representing an increase of 250.9% year-over-year and a decrease of 9.1% quarter-over-quarter.

Vehicle margin in the first quarter of 2022 was 22.4%, compared with 16.9% in the same quarter of 2021 and 22.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021. The increase in vehicle margin over the first quarter of 2021 was driven by higher average selling price attributable to the increase in vehicle deliveries of 2021 Li ONE since its release in May 2021.

Gross margin in the first quarter of 2022 was 22.6%, compared to 17.3% in the first quarter of last year and 22.4% in the first quarter of 2021. Operating expenses in the first quarter of 2022 were RMB2.58 billion or $406.5 million, representing an increase of 151.5% year over year and an increase of 9.4% quarter over quarter.

Research and development expenses in the first quarter of 2022 were RMB1.37 billion or $216.7 million, representing an increase of 167% year over year and an increase of 11.7% quarter over quarter. The increase in research and development expenses over the first quarter of last year was primarily driven by the increased employee compensation as a result of our growing number of research and development staff as well as increased cost associated with new product development.

The increase in research and development expenses over the fourth quarter of last year was mainly driven by increased employee compensation.

Selling, general and administrative expenses in the first quarter of 2022 were RMB1.2 billion or $189.8 billion, representing an increase of 135.9% year over year and an increase of 6.8% quarter over quarter. The increase in selling, general and administrative expenses over the first quarter of 2021 was primarily driven by increased employee compensation as a result of our growing number of staff, as well as increased marketing and promotional activities and rental expenses associated with the expansion of the Company's sales network.

Loss from operations in the first quarter of 2022 was RMB413.1 million or $65.2 million compared with RMB407.7 million loss from operations in the first quarter of 2021 and RMB24.1 million income from operations in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Net loss was RMB10.9 million or $1.7 million in the first quarter of 2022 compared with RMB360 million net loss in the first quarter of 2021 and RMB295.5 million net income in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow, our cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, time deposits and short-term investments totaled RMB51.19 billion or $8.07 billion as of March 31, 2022.

Operating cash flow in the first quarter of 2022 was RMB1.83 billion or $289.3 million. Free cash flow was RMB502 million or $79.2 million in the first quarter of 2022.

Now for our business outlook. For the second quarter of 2022, the Company expects the deliveries to be between 21,000 and 24,000 vehicles, representing an increase of 19.5% to 36.6% from the second quarter of 2021. The Company also expects second quarter total revenues to be between RMB6.16 billion and RMB7.04 billion or $972.3 million and $1.11 billion, representing an increase of 22.3% to 39.8% from the second quarter of last year.

This business outlook reflects the Company's current and preliminary view on the business situation and market condition, in particular the encouraging signs of recovery from the resurging pandemic in the Yangtze Delta region, which are all subject to change due to uncertainties related to factors such as the pace of pandemic recovery, among others.

I will now turn the call over to the operator and start the Q&A session. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Fei Fang from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.

(Spoken in Chinese) Great quarter. I have two questions, first about the business outlook with the broader market level assumptions that management are working with in terms of both supply and demand. With the specific launch timing for L9, how will production ramp up? Any comment on the broader market environment would be very helpful.

The second is about margin. The first quarter margin was a beat. Kevin discussed a retail price increase in April. Can you refresh us on the margin guidance from here? Thank you.

Thank you, Fang Fei. This is Kevin. Thank you for your question. Your first question, in fact the outlook we gave just now is based on our expectation of the recovery of the production of our suppliers in Yangtze Delta region. You can see from the end of April till now, although a lot of suppliers are still struggling to recover, we already see some of the positive signs that at least half of our suppliers already resumed their production. Therefore, there still are uncertainties for the next step.

In terms of the orders, we have enough orders on hand. Right now, the single biggest risk is still the production of our suppliers.

In terms of the March market launch plan for L9, as we just mentioned, in the third quarter of this year L9 will be delivered to our customers.

For the overall EV business, behind us we already see that in the past two quarters we have already seen very strong growth, both the production and the consumption. Looking to the future, I think there are uncertainties. First of all is the recovery of the supply chain. On the other hand, if the pandemic persists for a longer time, our fear is that consumers' spending desire will reduce. That's another thing we are monitoring closely.

Your second question, right now is not a time for us to provide another updated guidance for our gross margin. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Tim Hsiao from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.

(Spoken in Chinese) I've got two questions. The first question is about the (inaudible) strategy, because we think the production recovery [appears] as a matter of time, but has Li Auto taken any precautions, for example, reviewing or changing your current sourcing strategies in the wake of the recent disruption in Yangtze River Delta region? As Kevin mentioned, 80% of our suppliers are currently located there. Any thoughts on further diversification in China or offshore?

A second question is about potential price hike or margin pressure because on top of the RMB11,800 price hike of Li ONE since April, is there any pressure of a further price adjustment or (inaudible) likely for the price hike of key components, for example, batteries into second half, especially as production costs have substantially increased recently?

Thank you, Tim. This is Kevin again. First of all, for the supply chain management, in fact in the past we already have the measurement to try to qualify more suppliers to supply us, so that will not change. Right now, of course with the pandemic we will definitely consider some short-term measurement to counter the impact, because there are still uncertainties of the recovery of the pandemic in front of us.

For the long term, I don't think we will take any dramatic measurement to change our supply change management strategy, because the pandemic we think still is a one-time issue for us and the supply chain strategy is a long-term thing.

For the price adjustment, in fact with the 2021 Li ONE actually when we increased the price on April 1, we already took into consideration all the foreseeable material cost increases, but we'll continue to closely monitor the [volatility] of the cost. Right now, we don't see another need to further change our price, but that's based on the current information we have.

Our next question comes from Yuqian Ding from HSBC. Please go ahead.

(Spoken in Chinese) First is on the orderbook and the demand outlook. What's the new orderbook momentum post the price hike? How would the new orderbook in April compare to January? Looking ahead, how would management expect high-end pricing category EV demand in second half looks like more (inaudible) back-end loaded?

The second question is on the product cycle and product strategy. We may see L9 coming soon and next year would be a big product cycle launching year. Will we have your insight on how we plan the five new models value proposition in the coming 18 months, and the conviction or the product philosophy to enable them all potentially the segment winner?

Thank you. This is Kevin. I will take the first question and leave the second question to Li Xiang. As we all know that on April 1 we increased our price. Naturally, a lot of our sales leads were consumed in the end of March. In the beginning of April, because we restarted the sales lead pipeline, the first half of April was a little bit slow. But since the last week of April and also the first week of May, we already see a very strong comeback of the order intake. The only exception is Shanghai because the pandemic stopped us from taking orders.

Overall, we are still very confident that the demand for Li ONE will continue to be very strong. Overall, for the high-end [EV] market, unless the pandemic persists a very long time and hurts the economy very badly, otherwise we think the demand will continue to be stable. But from our side, because our Li ONE and also our incoming L9, the product competitiveness is very strong. Therefore, despite the demand side fluctuation, we still have a very strong confidence that these two products will do very good this year in the market.

(Interpreted) When we launched our first product by the end of 2019, it was one single product, which became a big success. But from the time on, we started to look at our product portfolio as a combination of different products, and therefore, since then, we started developing five different platforms to support our product portfolio, including the range extended platform, 800-volt high voltage electric vehicle platform, the autonomous driving platform, smart space platform, and our electric E-architecture platform.

All these five platforms combined together support our wide range of products across different price ranges.

So, by 2021, if you look at Li ONE as a product, in the RMB300,000 to RMB400,000 in the EV market, it already had a 30% market share and is still increasing, and that's our standard for a successful hit product, and we think that's a very comfortable market share in the target market.

With that in mind, we want to continue to deliver hit products in every price range within our target markets.

We look at our product portfolio with two perspectives. The first one is that we pair a different body type with different energy sources. By that I mean, pure electric vehicles will have one body type, and extended range vehicles would have a different body type. So, when we started building range extender vehicles, we realized that the best body type was SUVs, because neither sedans or MPVs were a good fit from a packaging standpoint for range extended vehicles.

By the same logic, when it comes to electric vehicles, we realized that big SUVs are no longer a good fit, because for energy efficiency reasons, and therefore, when we deliver our first electric vehicle, you will see a completely new body type that we believe is best optimized for pure electric vehicles.

With this combination we believe there will be no cannibalization between our own electric vehicle and range extender vehicle product portfolios. With those, we will completely cover the RMB200,000 to RMB500,000 target market.

That was our first strategy, and the second strategy is with respect to price range. With the goal of covering the entire RMB200,000 to RMB500,000 price range, in every RMB100,000 segment, we will have one hit product, one in range extended and one in pure electric.

We had a good start, because our first product was in the RMB300,000 price range, so from there we can go up to RMB400,000 to RMB500,000, and we can also go down to between RMB200,000 and RMB300,000. So, in every segment, as I said earlier, there will be one EV and one REV, and they will all be built based on those five platforms I mentioned earlier - the range extended vehicle platform, the high voltage electric vehicle platform, autonomous driving platform, smart space platform and E-Architecture platform.

So, by analogy, you can see our product portfolio is very similar to iPhone, where they have one key concept and platform, and from there on it covers all different price ranges, with the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and even the iPhone Mini.

In every price range you can see the product is absolute leader in that market segment, and that has been our role and our goal and philosophy since three years ago.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ming-Hsun Lee from Bank of America. Please ask your question.

(Spoken in Chinese) My first question is for the battery price and also the leasing supply. In the future will you think the leasing supply will constrain the EV growth for China?

And also, currently the battery price is still high. Do you think this is because some speculative trading, or it's really mainly because of real demand?

A similar question regarding your point of sales expansion, previously your target is 400 stores by the end of the year, but under the pandemic, will you slow down the progress?

Also, in terms of the charging power, do you have any plan? Are all of your charging stations based the super charging infrastructure? Thank you.

Lee, this is Kevin. Thank you for your question, your three questions. First of all, we think right now the battery cost, especially the raw material cost is already deviated from the reasonable price, of course, so, with the supply increase, we will definitely see gradually, the raw material costs should go down. But overall, for this year, we still expect that probably the price will still stay in the relatively high position. That's our outlook.

Of course, these high price of the raw material will translate into the increase of the end consumer price, therefore will hurt the market demand, but as I mentioned just now, with our Li ONE and our L9, because our product competitiveness is very high, we still have strong confidence that even with a slightly higher price, we can still get a lot of order, for example, for Li ONE, even though we increased the price, starting from 1 April, but as I've just mentioned, starting from end of April, till now, we see the orders still are coming strong.

In terms of the retail stores, we did have a quite aggressive plan, by end of this year, want to have more than 400 retail stores. Right now, of course, because of this pandemic issue, we are revisiting our plan. But we should all agree that the number of retail stores is a fundamental requirement for us to achieve a higher sales volume next year, so therefore, it doesn't matter how big the impact the pandemic for this year, we still want to open as many retail stores as possible, despite the impact of the pandemic.

In terms of charging posts, starting from this year, we already have a team starting to build the charging posts. Right now, the initial focus of this team is to primarily build charging posts along the highway, especially those highways connecting the big cities. Right now, the primary focus is still the highway to connect the cities, and within the city, it depends on the customer needs. We'll choose carefully whether we want to build the charging post within city. That's the strategy right now we have.

Thank you. Our next question comes from [Jing Qiang] from CICC. Please ask your question.

(Spoken in Chinese) So my first question about - financial question about other income of RMB280 million in the first quarter so where does it come from?

My next question is about the battery cost negotiation. I've heard that many car companies [accept] that they frequently negotiate their cost quarterly or half, semi-annually from there. So how about that? So if the price, if cost of battery will continually increase by later 1of this year, how do you reflect and there will be a further (inaudible) price to reflect the cost increase?

Last question about the product pipeline. We have seen that many [clients] they want to launch a mid- to large size pure electric [sedan] with positioning, a price positioning of around RMB200,000 this year. The market has very high expectations for these models. How do you view the market of this submarket? According to our [plan], if we are going to launch against and with a price below RMB300,000, I think that it should be in 2024. So are we worried about if the entry to the market too late to this market opportunity?

Thank you [Toni], this is Li Tie. I will take the first - the first question is other [income], the increase of other income as compared with last quarter was mainly the VAT refund upon collection as one of our companies was qualified as a software company, yes.

This is Kevin, for the battery cost we agreed with our suppliers with a framework to kind of relate the battery price with the fluctuation of the upstream raw materials. So therefore, for the coming quarters, we do need to renegotiate everything. But of course, we will always come back to our suppliers to ask for a cost saving, that's for sure, yes.

Also as I just mentioned, the price increase already reflected our expectation for the raw material price in the coming quarters, yes. Li Xiang.

Li Xiang: (Interpreted) It's very clear to us that by 2025, our core customers will still be families with kids and with that, three things become very clear. First is that we're always going to build vehicles with an acceptable level of interior dimensions for family users.

The second one is that all of our vehicles will be all-wheel drive. Third is that we want to make sure that every vehicle includes our latest autonomous driving and smart space solutions. So that every family member is able to enjoy them.

With these three things in mind, it's very natural that we will continue to focus on RMB200,000 to RMB500,000 price range and within this range we'll continue the mind of RMB300,000, RMB400,000 which is our starting point. From there on we'll expand upward to the full-size market and downwards to the midsize market. So this year, as you know, our focus will be the L9 release and next year we'll be launching three new vehicles, including a completely new range extended vehicle and also our first battery electric vehicle. You'll also see our first product in the RMB200,000 to RMB300,000 mid-size market.

Right, thank you. Our next question comes from Bin Wang from Credit Suisse. Please ask your questions.

(Spoken in Chinese) I would have one question about the battery price. So can you know when you start to accounting for the price increase for the battery, because as you mentioned, the battery price increased by 30%. Is it from January 1st or start from second quarter? If the first quarter already considering the price increase for the battery, you also actually increased the price start from April 1st, does that mean the second quarter margin will further increase? So can you perhaps guide us on this? Thank you.

Johnny Tie Li: Yes, Wang Bin, thank you for the question. It's a rather complicated question. So basically, the first quarter's financial performance already took consideration -- of course, already took consideration of part of the battery cost increase. The impact was not that dramatic, primarily due to, as you know, that we have inventories. So therefore, the cost in fact is a rolling mix. So that's for the first quarter. From the second quarter we'll have the battery cost increase, as you mentioned, and at the same time from the beginning of this quarter we'll have a selling price increase. So yes, so therefore the -- it's not that we can expect some very high gross margin compared to last quarter. Yes.

Okay.

Right, thank you. As we are reaching the end of our conference call, I'd like to turn the call back to the Company for closing remarks. Ms. Janet Zhang, please go ahead.

Sure. Thank you once again for joining with us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact Li Auto's Investor Relation's Team. That's all for today. Thank you and have a good one.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating, you may all disconnect.

Portions of this transcript that are marked (interpreted) were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call. The interpreter was provided by the Company sponsoring this Event.