NIO Inc Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Ming-Hsun Lee - Bank of America - Analyst : (Spoken in Chinese) My first question is related to operating expense. In the past you - William mentioned that R&D per quarter is expected to be around RMB3 billion, but this quarter we saw that the expense is close to RMB4 billion. So we want to understand if there is a new guidance for sales and marketing, as well as R&D expense.

Question: Ming-Hsun Lee - Bank of America - Analyst : (Spoken in Chinese) My second question is related to product pipeline. So this year you will have a new ES8, ES6 and EC6, EC7 and ET5 wagon version, so what will be the time for ES6, EC6 to be delivered? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MARCH 01, 2023 / 12:00PM, NIO.N - Q4 2022 NIO Inc Earnings Call Besides that, for ES7 and ET7, will you have a facelift version to further improve your autonomous driving function as well as marketing function? Meanwhile, could you also elaborate your rough product pipeline for 2024, including the second brand.

Question: Ming-Hsun Lee - Bank of America - Analyst : (Spoken in Chinese) Thank you, William.

Question: Bin Wang - Credit Suisse - Analyst : Thank you, I've actually got two questions about guidance. Number one is about volume, for full year still maintain the guidance for 250,000, because given that recently in the price cut by the competitors in the first quarter delivery and the actually earlier phase of the product, would you actually maintain the full year volume guidance about 250,000? That's number one. Number two, you actually mentioned earlier the number 4 quarter for NIO brand turn around to profitable. Given a change in the external competition, do you actually maintain the same guidance? Thank you.

Question: Bin Wang - Credit Suisse - Analyst : Thank you. Thank you, team.

Question: Yuqian Ding - HSBC - Analyst : Thanks, team. Yuqian here. I got two. First on ET5. We noticed order book contraction on the flagship volume model ET5. How would management look at a stabilized monthly sales volume on ET5 to 10,000 per month? What's the key driver to support? Is it more broadly a sector demand related or any specific service network expansion supported? The second question is on lithium to margin. The lithium price is correcting. We talked before about RMB100,000 per ton price correction roughly released 2% margin. So roughly we might get a 4% to 8% buffer this year. Can we keep them all? Or might we have to pass some to the consumers, given the universal pricing pressure? On that notion, will we take the CATL deal to get a lower lithium price but to lock up more sourcing share with them? Thank you.

Question: Jing Chang - China International Capital Corporation Limited, Research Division - Analyst : (foreign language) So my first question is about with the further increase in the number of our distribution storess how we will cover more loyal tier cities, considering that these customers in those markets are very sticky to traditional brands. So we make some more targeted adjustments in our products and marketing?

Question: Jing Chang - China International Capital Corporation Limited, Research Division - Analyst : (foreign language) So my second question about -- we can see that at the beginning of this year, the price competition in the new energy vehicle market has become more serious. And also, we are positioning on -- positioning luxury brand market, where we can still see a greater press reduction in both new energy and ICE vehicle market. So we will be more aggressive in the price strategy of new models. Have you considered the way of reducing some consideration and reduce -- to introduce more models with lower price?