Category: XPeng

China EV industry sell-off creates opportunity, says Morgan Stanley

leads the pack with superior execution, but risk-reward increasingly favors and after a drastic sell-off this year, Morgan Stanley said.

Shares of major Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers have generally suffered a sell-off so far this year, as the sector's weak sales at the start of the year and recent widespread price wars have raised investor concerns.

However, in Morgan Stanley's view, the sales potential of China's EV companies in the second half of the year is underestimated at a time when costs are sliding.

"We think YTD stock corrections should have discounted competition risks but underrate the cost-driven upside to EV margin/volume in 2H, " Morgan Stanley analyst Tim Hsiao's team said in a research note sent to investors on March 19.

As of Monday's close, NIO's (NYSE: NIO) US-traded ADR was down 10 percent this year, XPeng was down 8 percent, and Li Auto was up about 12 percent.

Hsiao's team believes that significant margin pressure from price wars will fuel market concerns about industry profitability and cash flow, especially among new energy vehicle (NEV) heavyweights, namely and China, which can afford to initiate another round of price cuts in the second quarter.

That, combined with weak full-year sales following the stimulus withdrawal, could dampen sales volumes and margins for EV brands in the first half of 2023, the team said.

Still, the production potential of China's NEV industry in the second half of the year and beyond appears to be underestimated as the decline in prices of batteries and key components accelerates following aggressive capacity expansion in 2022, the team noted.

This could translate into potential margin relief for NEV makers and potentially increase NEV penetration in the second half of the year in a cost-effective manner, the team said.

Hsiao's team estimates a 20-25 percent drop in battery costs for major NEV makers, implying a 6-10 percentage point cost savings.

The price drop of lithium carbonate, a key raw material for batteries, has accelerated in recent days and saw its biggest one-day drop so far this year on March 20, according to a CnEVPost report yesterday.

The average price of both industrial-grade lithium carbonate and battery-grade lithium carbonate fell by RMB 12,500 per ton on March 20, with the latest average price at RMB 272,500 per ton and RMB 312,500 per ton, respectively.

NIO's management said in a call with analysts after the March 1 earnings announcement that they expect lithium carbonate prices to fall back to around RMB 200,000 per ton this year, boosting gross margins back up.

EV makers that can take full advantage of this will not only enjoy margin relief, but also have more flexibility to price their models to further boost NEV penetration in mass markets and lower-tier cities, Hsiao's team wrote in their report.

"That said, the tailwinds from falling input costs may take time to kick in as our checks with major OEMs suggest they are still in discussions with battery suppliers on new terms," the team added.

The team believes that a tougher operating environment will accelerate market reshuffling, with leading EV manufacturers weathering the downturn better than their peers, while the growth of smaller, lagging EV startups could be slowed by a depletion of liquidity in 2023.

Growing investments should also push up cash burn rates. As a result, the ability to optimize working capital and access to market funding will play a more important role in ongoing operations in 2023, the team added.

"Our analysis suggests EV trio (NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto) will still hold fast, backed by healthy balance sheet conditions and better connections to capital markets," Hsiao's team wrote.

The team said they're fully aware of investor worries about EV startups' cash burn that may rapidly deplete their liquidity.

But they believe the EV trio can remain self-funded for the next 18 months, even under the stress-test scenario of a prolonged price war.

"We believe continuous investment would further solidify their technology leadership and enable them to have a better chance of winning out in the next up-cycle," the team wrote.

The team believes that trough valuations mean the market has lowered expectations for EV startups' operational performance and financial resilience in an industry downturn, making any marginal improvement in their sales a meaningful stock catalyst.

Li Auto leads the pack with superior execution, but risk-reward increasingly favors XPeng and NIO after this year's sharp dip, the team said.

Lithium prices see biggest drop this year in China as decline accelerates

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XPeng Q4 earnings call: Key points of transcript

announced its fourth-quarter earnings today and held a conference call with analysts.

Below are the key points mentioned by XPeng chairman and CEO, He Xiaopeng, during the call.

Inflection point

XPeng is approaching an inflection point, as we have clearly identified what our goals are, and what our strengths and weaknesses are.

Our overarching goal is to make XPeng a leader in the Chinese EV market, and ultimately win the global EV race.

Senior hire & org changes

The organizational restructure started with changes and upgrades in our top leadership. Ms. Fengying Wang brought us more than 30 years' experience in the automotive industry.

Fengying is taking full responsibility for our product planning and sales operations, and is also in charge of our product platform management scheme.

Her extensive industry experience, in-depth market insight and strong execution capabilities will help our products capture customer demand more accurately, while greatly improving efficiency in our sales and services divisions.

At the same time, the adaptations to our managements' organization are geared toward a flatter and more concentrated structure.

Since February, all design, R&D, production, supply chain and organizational management functions directly report to me.

I believe that these shifts will significantly improve our planning capabilities and lift the efficiency of our decision-making and execution in the coming months.

More importantly, these adjustments have effectively refreshed our execution and competitiveness. For the foreseeable future, I will remain focused on lifting the labor efficiency across our organization by multiple times so as to generate increased customer value with the same headcount, and greatly reduce costs across a full range of processes through technology innovation.

Product planning and design

With regard to our product planning and design, we concentrate on customer-perceived value and product differentiation in our innovation. We will make substantial changes to future products' model configuration mix, whole-vehicle modularized design and consistency in smart features.

In terms of interior and exterior styling and design, to meet XPeng customers' high standards for aesthetics, I am directly running the styling design division and building three teams that compete with each other to generate creative ideas.

These initiatives will continuously improve our interior and exterior styling and space design capabilities.

Customer-centric

We incorporated the Net Promoter Score, or NPS, into the core performance indicators for a variety of business functions and require feedback collection on a monthly basis.

The NPS performance evaluation will anchor the transformation of our product planning, design and development toward a customer-centric pathway. I believe our new products, new OTAs and new services-to-come will demonstrate substantial progress.

New P7i launch

Our in-store traffic and test-driving volume both hit new heights in recent months following the P7i's launch. This new product's smart features, styling design and performance, among other clear advantages in rivalry with similar products were well received among customers.

Amid the market's prevailing weakness in new order intake, our results outperformed the market. Our new order intake in February increased 100% over the previous month.

With the strong momentum of P7i orders following its official launch, we expect to see a considerable month-on-month growth of total new order intake in our March. This marks an initial success following our comprehensive transformation, which has also boosted our company morale.

New SUV G6

Our second new product model coming up this year – the G6 – will make its debut at the Shanghai auto show. Its official launch and vehicle deliveries will occur around the middle of this year.

The G6 will bring the most advanced electrification and smart mobility technologies to the 200,000 to 300,000 yuan-priced NEV SUV market. With unrivaled interior space, range, styling and interior decoration, we believe the G6 will become the top-selling model in its market segment.

Following the ramp-up of G6's mass production, we expect G6's monthly sales target to be 2 to 3 times that of its P7 predecessor's sales.

In addition, in the second half of 2023, we will launch a brand-new BEV 7-seat MPV.

This new MPV model is designed to cater to customer cohorts that demand larger interior room, while serving the needs of our family customers for a human-machine co-pilot.

Chat GPT

Recently, Chat GPT4.0 and other AI-based applications have created a buzz among hundreds of millions of users on the massive potential of generative AI models.

Given this development, there is an even higher possibility that autonomy technology further advances from Level 4 to Level 5.

We expect to incorporate GPT technology deeply into XPeng's business across the board to create groundbreaking user experiences and exceptional improvements to our operational efficiency.

XNGP

In March, we began to accelerate the OTA rollout of City NGP, compatible with multiple models, in several cities including Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai.

Through City NGP's OTA, we took the lead in mass producing the Transformer-based BEV time-series network, XNET, in China, which achieved a milestone in deep learning algorithm development and application.

In the second half of this year, XNGP, powered by XNET's deep learning algorithms, will no longer depend on a high-definition map. That said, XNGP will be supporting drivers on more urban roads, and across even broader geographic coverage nationwide.

Results from our testing showed the new version of XNGP outperformed peer's actual on-road performance in the United States. This leads us to believe XPeng's autonomous technology and its customer adoption is approaching a pivotal turning point.

While keeping high safety standards remains a top priority of our technology advancements, we will also be focused on rapid development to improve scenario coverage, user experience and software and hardware cost optimization.

In terms of scenario coverage, we have expanded the usage of the advanced technology from highway scenarios into city scenarios, where ADASs are used at high frequency and even become an essential driving tool.

Going forward, we will strive to further broaden ADAS usage to more end-to-end driving scenarios, such as internal compound ways and non-public roads, and expand our geographic coverage from three cities to more major cities nationwide beginning in the third quarter.

In terms of user experience, we have achieved an important psychological barrier for customers to use autonomous driving to "relieve" drivers, that is, drivers can let the machine safely take the wheel, resting assured that they are acting only as a supervisor.

Looking ahead, we expect that through continuous OTA upgrades, XNGP's driving skills will escalate every year and in 2-3 years reach a level that is equivalent to a human driver with 3 years of driving experience. We also expect that the number of manual takeovers per 100 km will be reduced to one or fewer.

Cost cut

Regarding cost efficiency, we plan to cut XNGP's BOM cost significantly next year and adjust our sales model from one that bundles sales of software and hardware, to one that splits the sales of software and hardware, which is going to enable autonomous driving on all of our new vehicles, and allow more customers to use the latest autonomous driving capabilities.

In pursuit of breakthroughs in the aforementioned three realms, we will bring great value to our customers and build out competitive edge in technologies, delivering long-term, sustainable revenue growth at scale and with improved margin contribution.

It has been said that the past five-year period was the golden age for new energy vehicles. I believe the next five-year period will be the golden age for autonomous driving.

During the five years to come, XPeng's highly advanced autonomous driving technology will help XPeng accelerate our ability to gain top market share.

More powerful cost control will be the core competitive edge that will enable XPeng to secure its leadership in the EV market. We will advance the platform-based approach and technology innovation to propel our cost reduction strategy.

Platform approach

Entering 2023, we are applying a full platform engineering approach for our BEV vehicle platform, electrical and electronic architecture, powertrain system and ADAS software and hardware development.

This signals that we are entering a new phase of car-making in a unified system. In this way, we are able to develop products with superior customer experience at a faster pace and a lower cost.

In the past, our R&D strengths were primarily manifested by our leading product performance. In the future, our R&D strengths will be underlined by maintaining the leading performance while achieving remarkable cost reductions.

We have mapped out our strategic execution roadmap with associated cost reductions include an over 50% decrease for autonomous driving costs and an about 25% decrease for vehicle hardware costs (including powertrain) over the 2023-2024 period by means such as technology innovation and optimized configurations.

I am pleased to see the design, technology R&D, supply chain and manufacturing teams are now working in a synergetic way to make our products more competitive through innovation.

Cash resources

In terms of cash liquidity, our cash on hand at the end of 2022 amounted to over RMB38 billion. As we have nearly completed our investments in our two manufacturing bases over the past few years, our Capex will decline substantially. We have also established three powerful vehicle platforms that can support a serial of new model launches over the next three years.

Our R&D will further concentrate on initiatives that best correspond with long-term trends and further differentiate our product in terms of customer experience and cost. We will also pursue improvements in our operating efficiency throughout the entire process.

For example, within our sales operations, we strive to improve same-store efficiency by optimizing our store network. We believe these cost optimization efforts will start to deliver material results beginning in the second half of this year.

Expanding scale

Expanding our scale and market share to achieve economy of scale in both software and hardware is the primary goal in our long-term strategy.

Although the product and management adjustment cycle in the automotive industry is more difficult than other industries and takes a longer period of time, we are still willing to sacrifice short-term sales and more patiently pursue greater victories in the medium- and long-term.

Looking ahead

Excitingly, as we rapidly implement adjustments and changes to our management, in addition to instituting a host of upgrades and iterations in our product portfolio and marketing capabilities, we have seen encouraging changes and positive results.

I am firmly convinced that beginning in the third quarter of this year, XPeng's monthly sales number will achieve significant growth, both sequentially and year-over-year, as well as be much higher than the industry's average growth rate.

I would reiterate that our current focus is on building and improving our capabilities in organization, product design, marketing and cost control. Continuous efforts in refining management and accelerated new product launches in the era of autonomous driving will lead us to the next level of exponential growth. We will continue to strive for this goal.

Lastly, we expect our total vehicle deliveries to be between 18,000 and 19,000 units in the first quarter of 2023 and revenue to be between RMB4 and RMB4.2 billion.

XPeng Q4 revenue misses estimates, gross margin falls to single digit

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XPeng Q4 earnings: Deutsche Bank’s first look

delivered weak 4Q results, accompanied by a muted 1Q outlook that shows March demand still under pressure, Deutsche Bank said.  |  XPeng US | XPeng HK

XPeng (NYSE: XPEV) reported weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings today, and as usual, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu's team provided their first impressions.

Here's the full text of the note the team sent to investors today.

XPeng delivered weak 4Q results (even softer than our preview), accompanied by a muted 1Q outlook that shows March demand still under pressure.

Deliveries for 4Q were already reported at 22,204 units, leading to revenue of 5.1bn RMB, below our 5.4bn and consensus 5.7bn on lower vehicle pricing and "other sales."

Total gross margin declined 480bps QoQ to 8.7%, missing our 11.5% estimate (consensus 12.1%), driven by much lower vehicle margin (5.7% vs. our 8.5% due to increased promotional activity; lowest since 2H20).

Opex of 2,986m RMB essentially matched our model as lower R&D offset higher SG&A.

All together, EPS of (2.57) came in worse than our (2.33) forecast. Management provided a slightly worse 1Q23 volume guidance than expected, calling for 18,000-19,000 deliveries, vs. our 19,500 forecast (translating into 4.0-4.2bn RMB in revenue).

This would imply March improving MoM to low 7,000 units at the mid-point.

ASP will continue to worsen following price cuts and unfavorable mix (G9 volume struggling).

XPeng Q4 revenue misses estimates, gross margin falls to single digit

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XPeng Q4 earnings call: G6 deliveries to begin around end of Q2

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(NYSE: XPEV) today announced its fourth-quarter earnings results and subsequently held a conference call with analysts.

Below are the key highlights of the call.

Through drastic organizational optimization, XPeng's strategic and organizational adjustments have achieved significant results in the first quarter.

Currently, all XPeng R&D, production and supply chain systems report directly to He Xiaopeng, and president Wang Fengying has taken full responsibility for product planning and sales and service systems.

In the next two years, XPeng will further strengthen the network layout and improve the effectiveness of frontline sales staff by flattening the management of the sales network.

In the future in product planning and design, XPeng will innovate more around user-perceivable value and differentiation, with great changes in subsequent model configuration combinations, overall vehicle modular design and intelligence consistency.

Currently, Mr. He himself has directly managed the styling team and created three styling front-end teams for creative competition, which will significantly improve the styling, space and other design performance of XPeng's future models.

With the launch of the P7i, the number of visitors and test drives at XPeng stores reached a new high in recent months.

XPeng stores saw a 100 percent increase in the number of visitors in February compared to January, and a significant increase in March compared to February.

The XPeng G6 will be unveiled at the Shanghai auto show and will be officially launched and delivered around the end of the second quarter with a price range of RMB 200,000 ($29,050) - 300,000.

The company's monthly sales target for the G6 is 2-3 times that of the P7.

The monthly sales of XPeng in the second half of this year will have several times more room for improvement than the level at the beginning of the year.

XPeng will launch a new pure EV model in the second half of the year, which will be a 7-seat MPV.

XPeng has developed a clear roadmap, through technological innovation, configuration optimization and other means, the cost of autonomous driving is expected to drop by more than 50 percent between this year and next year, and the cost of vehicle hardware, including power systems, will drop by 25 percent.

The company will move from selling hardware and software as a whole to selling hardware and software separately, making fully autonomous driving a standard feature.

The artificial intelligence represented by GPT has a huge future. It will have a new interpretation of how autonomous driving can be implemented and will enable L4 autonomous driving to move to L5 much faster.

XPeng expects more coupling between GPT-related technologies and various parts of the company's business.

XPeng Q4 revenue misses estimates, gross margin falls to single digit

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XPeng Q4 revenue misses estimates, gross margin falls to single digit

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reported revenue of RMB 5.14 billion in the fourth quarter, below market expectations of RMB 5.732 billion.

This represents a 39.95 percent year-on-year decline and a 24.63 percent decline from the third quarter.

XPeng generated RMB 4.66 billion of automotive sales revenue in the fourth quarter, down 43.1 percent from the same period in 2021 and down 25.3 percent from the third quarter of 2022.

It reported a gross margin of 8.7 percent in the fourth quarter compared to 12.0 percent in the same period of 2021 and 13.5 percent in the third quarter of 2022.

It had an automotive margin of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter compared to 10.9 percent in the same period in 2021 and 11.6 percent in the third quarter of 2022. For the full year, the auto margin was 9.4 percent, compared to 11.5 percent in 2021.

The company reported a net loss of RMB 2.36 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to market expectations of a loss of RMB 2.076 billion and a loss of RMB 1.29 billion in the same period last year.

XPeng expects first-quarter vehicle deliveries to be in the range of 18,000 to 19,000 units, a decrease of about 45.0 percent to 47.9 percent year-on-year.

The company expects total revenue for the first quarter to range from RMB4.0 billion to RMB4.2 billion, a decrease of about 43.7 percent to 46.3 percent year-on-year.

XPeng delivered 22,204 vehicles in the fourth quarter, above the upper end of the previously provided guidance range of 20,000 to 21,000, but down 46.82 percent year-on-year and down 24.91 percent from the third quarter.

XPeng's previous revenue guidance for the fourth quarter was RMB 4.8 billion to RMB 5.1 billion, representing a decrease of about 40.4 percent to 43.9 percent year-on-year.

XPeng earnings preview: Q4 to be soft with promotions hitting margins

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XPeng Q4 revenue misses estimates, gross margin falls to single digit

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reported revenue of RMB 5.14 billion in the fourth quarter, below market expectations of RMB 5.732 billion.

This represents a 39.95 percent year-on-year decline and a 24.63 percent decline from the third quarter.

XPeng generated RMB 4.66 billion of automotive sales revenue in the fourth quarter, down 43.1 percent from the same period in 2021 and down 25.3 percent from the third quarter of 2022.

It reported a gross margin of 8.7 percent in the fourth quarter compared to 12.0 percent in the same period of 2021 and 13.5 percent in the third quarter of 2022.

It had an automotive margin of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter compared to 10.9 percent in the same period in 2021 and 11.6 percent in the third quarter of 2022. For the full year, the auto margin was 9.4 percent, compared to 11.5 percent in 2021.

The company reported a net loss of RMB 2.36 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to market expectations of a loss of RMB 2.076 billion and a loss of RMB 1.29 billion in the same period last year.

XPeng expects first-quarter vehicle deliveries to be in the range of 18,000 to 19,000 units, a decrease of about 45.0 percent to 47.9 percent year-on-year.

The company expects total revenue for the first quarter to range from RMB4.0 billion to RMB4.2 billion, a decrease of about 43.7 percent to 46.3 percent year-on-year.

XPeng delivered 22,204 vehicles in the fourth quarter, above the upper end of the previously provided guidance range of 20,000 to 21,000, but down 46.82 percent year-on-year and down 24.91 percent from the third quarter.

XPeng's previous revenue guidance for the fourth quarter was RMB 4.8 billion to RMB 5.1 billion, representing a decrease of about 40.4 percent to 43.9 percent year-on-year.

XPeng earnings preview: Q4 to be soft with promotions hitting margins

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XPeng to launch City NGP driver assistance feature in Shenzhen

previously said the City NGP feature will be implemented on multiple models in several cities, including Shenzhen and Shanghai, starting in March.

XPeng US | XPeng HK

XPeng (NYSE: XPEV) is rolling out its FSD-like City Navigation Guided Pilot (City NGP) feature in more cities.

The XPeng P5 will receive its seventh vehicle OTA upgrade, which will make NGP functionality available in Shenzhen, according to information released today by the electric vehicle (EV) maker.

City NGP can be up to 90 percent as efficient as a human driver, easily handling dense traffic during peak commuting hours, as well as complex road conditions, XPeng said.

With access to the feature, XPeng vehicles can intelligently recognize traffic lights by lane and automatically start and stop, it said.

With the support of LiDARs, vehicles can actively avoid pedestrians and vehicles as well as roadblocks, making the smart driving experience safer, XPeng said.

On October 21, 2022, XPeng opened the City NGP feature to all P5 sedans in Guangzhou, where it is headquartered. The P5 is the first of the company's models to support the LiDAR option.

All P5 models equipped with LiDARs and featuring XPilot 3.5 software and upgrades will have access to City NGP functionality.

In cities where City NGP is available, P5 users can use NGP assisted driving on regular roads, in addition to using the feature on highways.

To better build trust in human-machine co-driving, XPeng has introduced the SR smart assisted driving environment simulation display. The City NGP has a richer center control and instrumentation SR simulation display than the highway NGP.

In announcing February delivery figures on March 1, XPeng said that the City NGP advanced driver assistance feature will be implemented in several models in several cities, including Shenzhen and Shanghai, starting in March.

The upcoming OTA upgrade for the XPeng P5 will see the Xmart OS version number upgraded to 3.4.0, which will bring more than 20 enhancements to the base experience in addition to making City NGP available in Shenzhen, the company said.

XPeng opens City NGP to all eligible P5 vehicles in Guangzhou

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XPeng finishes consolidating sales system to improve efficiency, report says

The management teams of 's direct sales channel and its authorized dealer channel have been combined to reduce unnecessary competition for interest from within, according to local media.

XPeng US | XPeng HK

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

XPeng's (NYSE: XPEV) organizational restructuring appears to be continuing, with the latest move completing a major reorganization of its sales system, according to a new report.

XPeng's sales system has recently completed changes in its internal management structure, with the management teams of its direct sales channel as well as its authorized dealer channel being merged, according to a report by local media outlet Jiemian.

The company is one of the rare new Chinese carmakers to have both a direct and dealership system. This approach helped XPeng rapidly expand its number of stores and reduce the cost of building them in the early stages of its development, Jiemian's report noted.

As of the third quarter of last year, XPeng had more than 400 stores, of which about 70 percent were directly operated by the company and 30 percent were authorized dealers. As a comparison, and 's latest store counts were 296 and 387, respectively, according to the report.

However, these two sales channels of XPeng are managed by different teams and thus have the problem of competing for each other's interests.

XPeng's directly managed stores are under XPeng Auto Trading, headed by co-founder He Tao. Its authorized dealers are managed by the UDS (User Development Service Center) team, headed by chief talent officer and vice president of sales Liao Qinghong.

A previous report by local media 36kr mentioned that at the height of competition between these two teams, XPeng's direct system received a fund, one of the invisible uses of which was to find problems with the authorized dealer system.

Disruptions in the sales network were one of the reasons for XPeng's poor sales performance last year, Jiemian's report noted.

XPeng sold 120,757 vehicles in 2022, meeting only 48.3 percent of its full-year sales target, according to the report.

Starting in January, XPeng began integrating the two different sales systems, a process that was recently completed, Jiemian's report said, citing a source familiar with the matter.

On January 30, XPeng announced that Wang Fengying, formerly president of Great Wall Motor, has been named president of the company.

Ms. Wang will be responsible for XPeng's product planning, portfolio management and sales operations, reporting to the company's chairman and chief executive officer, He Xiaopeng, XPeng said at the time.

After heading sales, Ms. Wang removed XPeng's original big region system and redefined more than 20 sales districts, with direct stores and authorized dealers in each district managed by a single head, according to Jiemian.

The unified management of Xpen'sg directly managed stores and authorized dealers will be able to avoid competition between the two and help reduce the impact on consumers, the source said.

XPeng earnings preview: Q4 to be soft with promotions hitting margins

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XPeng earnings preview: Q4 to be soft with promotions hitting margins

"We expect generally soft results and a weak 1Q23 outlook due to challenging demand and pricing dynamics," Edison Yu's team said.

US | XPeng HK

XPeng (NYSE: XPEV) will report fourth-quarter earnings on Friday, and as usual, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu's team provided their preview.

"We expect generally soft results and a weak 1Q23 outlook due to challenging demand and pricing dynamics," the team said in a research report sent to investors yesterday.

Soft fourth-quarter

XPeng will report its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 on Friday, March 17, before the US markets open.

It delivered 22,204 vehicles in the fourth quarter, above the upper end of the guidance range of 20,000 to 21,000, but down 46.82 percent year-on-year and down 24.91 percent from the third quarter.

XPeng's previous revenue guidance for the fourth quarter was RMB 4.8 billion to RMB 5.1 billion, representing a year-on-year decrease of about 40.4 percent to 43.9 percent.

"We expect a soft quarter with deliveries already reported at 22,204, above management's guidance range (20,000-21,000), but with promotional activity hitting margins," Yu's team wrote.

The team expects XPeng to post revenue of RMB 5.4 billion yuan and a gross margin of 11.5 percent in the fourth quarter.

They expect XPeng's vehicle margin to be 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter, down 3.1 percentage points from the third quarter, and adjusted earnings per share of RMB -2.33.

The current analyst consensus in the Bloomberg survey is for revenue of RMB 5.7 billion, gross margin of 12.1 percent and adjusted EPS of RMB -2.25.

For the first quarter, Yu's team expects deliveries to be around 19,000-20,000 units and for gross margin to drop to single digits as price cuts take hold.

XPeng deliveries in January and February were 5,218 and 6,010 units respectively, for a cumulative total of 11,228 units. Insurance registration figures for the past two weeks suggest that the company did not see a significant improvement in deliveries in March.

Uncertainty in 2023

The key to XPeng's relevance going forward is to win back market share, and that could take several quarters to achieve, which has created significant uncertainty this year, Yu's team said.

Demand for the company's flagship SUV, the G9, has clearly been disappointing, despite mostly positive reviews, the team said, adding that they expect XPeng to potentially make pricing or SKU adjustments to the SUV in the coming months.

XPeng's new P7i sedan should help with order volume, but there won't be materially beneficial until the second quarter, the team said.

Most importantly, XPeng's upcoming Model Y competitor, the G6, needs to reach at least 5,000 units per month by the end of the year to be considered a success, the team said.

The team now expects XPeng to be on track to deliver 145,000 vehicles in 2023, a 10,000-unit downward revision from earlier, taking into account the decline in G9 sales.

How can capacity utilization be improved?

If XPeng's sales continue to be weak, its management may need to get creative to improve its capacity utilization, Yu's team said, adding that the easiest way to do that would be to sign some large fleet deals.

That may be hard in China, considering and GAC have stronger positions in the taxi and ride-sharing segment, but XPeng recently signed deals with some local car rental companies to buy its P7 sedan, the team noted.

XPeng entered into a strategic partnership with local car rental company eHi Car Services on July 19, 2022, and delivered the first few hundred cars to the latter.

On January 9 this year, XPeng signed agreements with car rental company China Auto Rental and 's travel service platform Xiaolinggou Travel Technology, and completed the delivery of the first XPeng P7 vehicles in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

In addition, XPeng has restarted its expansion efforts in Europe, where large fleet deals could make sense due to the region's high percentage of corporate fleets and low availability of cheap BEV options, Yu's team said.

"We note BYD has an agreement with SIXT for 100,000 EVs and XPeng's vehicles fall into a similar price point. BYD also just announced a 5,000 unit agreement with UK's Octopus EV," the team wrote.

Another option is to partner more deeply with traditional OEMs on EVs and robotaxis, which could come in the form of equity investments or strategic alliances, according to the team.

XPeng offering discounts to clear P7 inventory, facelift to launch next week, report says

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