Li Auto Inc. (NASDAQ:LI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Xiang Li: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] To translate the previous question — answer the previous question, on the matrix organization upgrade, it’s something we have invested a significant amount of resources and manpower. Our business team at the beginning of the year had set a annual delivery target of 360,000 units, but considering two factors, we had in fact earlier this year downgraded the target to 300,000 units. One is the overall economic environment, and the other is considering many of the enterprises while they’re carrying out organization upgrades, their growth, in fact, had stagnated for two to three years. However, in hindsight, the actual results from the first half of this year, we — our operating efficiency has not only not declined, but actually — we actually saw a very significant increase.

We have beaten our target every single month and the overall coordination and cooperation efficiency is very high. The benefits from a organizational upgrade have significantly exceeded our expectations. The organizational upgrade has really allowed us to find a trench wars as a army group in the smart electric vehicle industry, which is known for having very long product cycles and long value chains. Once we have achieved certain milestones in terms of market share, we are able to defend it very steadily and continue to build on top of it. So, we can see, as a result, we have displayed a very steady growth curve over this first half, but also the second half of this year. And that is the real benefit of our organizational upgrade. In terms of the matrix organization, there are really three types of specific benefits.

First of all, from our — well, we describe ourselves as a gorilla in our early days to being actual formal armed forces. The company is really building highways for its core businesses, so that every person can — on the value chain can run very efficiently. Even though there are more traffic rules on highways, overall the efficiency of highway is much higher and there are much fewer accidents. And secondly, the organizational upgrade has allowed us to build a very robust training structure for our employees and business practices. The working mechanism is very similar to artificial intelligence from perception and observations to setting goals and planning activities, and finally through execution and the collaboration, and after action reviews to really build in as company’s capabilities.

So even for a fresh graduate, he or she doesn’t need to start as a business assistant, but rather can really get into real battles and grow quickly. And thirdly, is what we call interlocking, and it’s really a contractual relationship between our different teams and talents. Compared to the OKR mechanism, our matrix organization could change what we used to call alignment to interlocking, which is essentially a contract between teams and different individuals. So, when people set their goals, they can challenge each other. And when they execute, they can work very closely and collaborate to deliver the best results. And so, by going from alignment to interlocking, we’re really setting a contract between the different teams. And the target become more and more challenging, but we’re able to achieve these targets at a higher — with higher and higher confidence.

So, overall, we believe that the most critical ingredient to a successful organizational upgrade is great culture, which includes putting customers first, taking the right path, but not the easy path, and building everything on collaboration, which is our core value. The organization and process is really the best product that we can build for our employees. It’s simple yet sophisticated, and it brings the best practices from each business area and build them into products so that the organization can grow along the way. So, without great culture, business processes are going to be rigid and complicated. So, this is the biggest learning from upgrading our matrix organization and processes. So, basically product upgrades bring more margins or value to the company and organizational upgrade bring more efficiency for the company.

Operator: Our next question comes from Bin Wang with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.