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

Xiang Li: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] On stores, we have a firm belief that good products and good channel work in tandem. We can’t live without either of them. A metric we use internally is for a store which has been operating for six months, we think getting over 100 orders per month is a pretty healthy level of operating efficiency. But with that said, we’ll still focus on not only short-term sales per store, but also long term, we’ll be looking into investing in new store and expanding our sales network. By 2025, we’ll be — by then have many models and much greater sales than today. So, we will — are still committed to opening more stores and covering more cities, covering more users. And we really think there’s not much secret sauce in terms of where to open stores and how the stores would look like.

Because in Mercedes, BMW and Audi has — all of them have verified a very successful model in terms of user coverage and city coverage. So, we don’t really need to reinvent wheels here. Our plan is really in the next few years to continue to expand to lower-tier cities and cover more users just following their footsteps, so that we could support our sales healthy by 2025.

Ming Hsun Lee: [Foreign Language] So my second question is regarding your charging network. So, do you have any plan regarding your expansion target? What’s your potential CapEx? Will you build charging station by yourself or mainly let the third-party to build and operate? Will all of those charging stations be 5C grade or some will be lower grade?

Xiang Li: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] We’re still on track to rolling out 300 supercharging stations by the end of this year. And in 2023, our charging stations, by the end of this year, will cover mainly the four economic zones, which includes the Tianjin-Beijing- Hebei area, the River Delta area, and the Guangdong Bay Area, as well as the Chengdu-Chongqing area. And by 2025, we will be have built 3,000 HPC charging stations, which will cover over 90% of all of the highway mileage, as well as the major cities in China. We will make sure to finish — achieve that goal, of course, with operating efficiency as well as a healthy free cash flow in mind. And so far, we believe the financial burden is totally manageable. All of our highway HPC stations will be built and operated in-house. And all the city stations will be working with the franchise models, so that to accelerate the expansion of charging stations.

Operator: The next question will come from Yuqian Ding with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Yuqian Ding: [Foreign Language] I’ve got two questions. The first is on the OPEC management. The company’s old OPEC management has been quite good, especially in the first half, the R&D run rate is roughly 30%, 40% of the full year guidance. So, can we structurally revising down the guidance on R&D and SG&A or that would suggest in the second half when we roll out NOA in 100 cities that would require more intensity in terms of R&D and SG&A? And the second question is about breaking out into our current dominating zone. We’re currently quite dominant in the big size, the family utility SUV at the pricing category above RMB300,000. But in the future, we’ll probably have more to launch in a pricing category between RMB200,000 to RMB300,000. Currently, we’re seeing a very intense competition and many new models supply over there. So, how do we potentially differentiate over there and maximize the volume impact that we’re currently seeing in our dominating zone?