Autohome Inc. (NYSE:ATHM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

In the beginning of the year, we enter into a strategic partnership with Baidu Ernie bot, and we will leverage the capability of Baidu’s Smart Cloud connecting with Ernie bot. And based on our own data and technology strengths, we’re going to have the comprehensive convergence of intelligent dialog technology with auto digital services. This is also the first application scenario of the AI large language model technologies on the auto sector in China. In product wise, in the first half of this year, we have launched our AI based intelligent two, which is called Smart Selection to facilitate and empower the dealers to quickly segment their clients and to reach out to the high net worth individuals as soon as possible, release their capacity and improve service quality.

And based on GPT model, we are also helping the users and the clients to select the cars and also have the dealers to do the operation analysis. And, so another example, our AI smart writing instrument is also one of the functions in our intelligent assistant; it can actually facilitate and empower the dealers to complete high quality and very good writing as well as the content release. We hope that by relying on this kind of large language model product, we can continue to have the dealers to cut cost and improve efficiency as well as to enhance their overall operational efficiency. Okay, next question.

Operator: Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Thomas Chong: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Thanks management for taking my questions. My first question is about the budget spent by OEM in the second half this year as well as the 2024. My second question is related to the overall used car market as well as the strategies for [indiscernible]. Thank you.

Craig Yan Zeng: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Okay, I will first may take the question about the budget plan for the OEM in second half as well as next year. In the second half of this year, and in particular since Q4, we see that actually the OEMs, we would like to invest more of their budget in promoting the transaction from the user side. For example, to support the leads generation as well as to invest our advertisement or directly subsidize the consumers. And for next year, just like Mr. Long mentioned, we think that actually for the market investments, we will continue to be precautiously optimistic, because for the OEM, since their profit margin are under some pressure, we will pay more attention to the effectiveness of the budget investments.

For example, we will prioritize the support to the dealers or directly subsidize the consumers. As a result in terms of the ad investments, they will be more precautious and they tend to further diversify their investment. So they will also pay more and higher attention to the effectiveness of that. And looking into the future, I think that we will continue to grab the opportunities, in particularly in two areas, first of all, accelerate a digital application of AI and secondly, do prioritize and focusing on NEV. And by leveraging our strengths, we will also try to win more customers and try to get their budgets and investments. And for the used car market, I already mentioned that due to the price cut of the new vehicles and because of COVID-19, we do see that used car market has been under some pressure as well as some restrictions.

But I believe that in the future years, you know, the price cuts for the new cars already come to a specific limit. And we believe that the used car market can expect a double-digit growth. And for TTP, TTP is already generating profit. It means that it’s already gone through this stage of survival. It’s already enter into the stage of expansion and future development. In the future, we will continue to leverage the resources from the group, as well as the other partners to facilitate the development of TTP. And in the previous answered the questions, we also mentioned the three-in-one service format. So we think that it will greatly help TTP to develop and will continue to facilitate high speed growth. Okay, next question, please.

Operator: Thank you. We will take our final question. Your final question comes from the line of Brian Gong from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.