XPeng Inc. (NYSE:XPEV) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And secondly, if we talk about on the short term micro level, and I think that it would have the following areas and the first one would be marketing. And we are always looking at how to spend less money to improve the marketing results. And secondly, it’s all about the sales and the service capability. As I talked earlier, last quarter of 2023, we had terminated 130 dealers, and those were the underperforming ones. And by Q2 this year, once we have built up our new dealer partners and matured and nurtured all these dealers. And we believe that this is the dealers who would help us to be able to further promote our vehicles in the third and the fourth tier cities. And thirdly, it is about the functionality and the capability of your product.

And so from the micro level, it is all about marketing, plus sales, plus service and plus your product.

Tim Hsiao: [Foreign Language] Thanks for sharing all the details. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Ming Hsun Lee with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Ming Hsun Lee: [Foreign Language] So my first question is regarding your cooperation with Volkswagen. Could you give more quantified answer regarding your cooperation? For example, how many components you are able to co purchase along with the Volkswagen? And how much cost do you expect to save?

Charles Zhang: Hi, Ming, this is Charles. I think a few weeks ago, we announced that we have entered into the master agreement for the platform and the software services. That is a major development milestone for the projects we’re working together based on our G9 platform. In the meantime, we’re also entering into the joint procurement program that we will jointly procure the components for both our models on top of the G9 platform and also the Volkswagen’s models building on our G9 platform. I will say that, that’s a very high degree of the platform and the component sharing. And through the joint procurement program, also leveraging Volkswagen’s world class supply chain capabilities, we have seen the initial good results coming out of from the joint sourcing program.

And we believe that such joint sourcing program will continue to allow us to optimize our cost structure and also quickly bring our own cost structure to the competitive level in the market. Also, I think last point is that, as Xiaopeng mentioned in his remark, the revenue generating from the platform software services will start to kick in from 2024. And it is the recurring — once it started to recorded in our P&L, it will be a recurring revenue and will have meaningful impact — meaningfully positive impact to our GP margin. And so it will continue to give us the positive contribution to our profitability.

Ming Hsun Lee: [Foreign Language] My second question is related to your MONA project — product. So how do you think about your integration level between XPeng brand as well as the MONA mono project brand? And could you also give us more details about the progress for you to launch the 2B model and also 2C model? And also lastly, is the autonomous driving functions provided by MONA similar to [indiscernible] 3.5?

Brian Gu: Hi, Ming, it’s Brian. Let me address your question on this MONA project. Yes, we’re very excited that we’ll be launching the MONA sub brand in a very short time. And also, we think it will be, I would say, one of the blockbuster products in this category. The reason we think there’s a potential is because: one, we think it’s a very well designed product, it has, I think, I would say, best-in-class design as well as in some of the functions, especially as it related to smart functions. We think it will have differentiation compared to similar products in this category. At the same time, we have done a lot of effort, try to make sure the product is also very competitive from both cost as well as competitiveness in terms of the focusing on both 2C and 2B channels.

So needless to say, we have high hopes for this MONA product. And also, in terms of strategy, we think it will have actually the dual prong channels. I think it will start from the 2C channel first to make sure it will be received as a premium product and then followed by, I think, 2B channel sales. So that’s likely to be the sequence of our marketing. From the specific product functions and capabilities, I will probably leave that to the launch event to give the full details. But needless to say, again, we think it’s a very competitive product. We also have plans to steadily improve on this product based on additional, I would say, development plan for later this year as well as early next year. So this is also going to be improving as a platform in this A class.

So again, I mean, I think this is a lot to expect for, and I think I would love all of you to wait until our launch event, which will happen probably very soon.

Ming Hsun Lee: Thank you, Brian.

Operator: Your next question comes from Bin Wang with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Bin Wang: [Foreign Language] And my question is about the full year 2024 volume target. For the media report that your target is 260,000 to 280,000 units. Is that in the wide range you are thinking about? If that is the case, which means in each quarter you actually need to sell about 75,000 units in prior monthly 25,000. So if you — where you can achieve 25,000 if it’s true? Secondly, do you actually got some commitments from DiDi to ascertain to be from the MONA and how much volume from the export? Thank you.