00:00Being listed in Hong Kong has always been in our plan book and because it's our home base
00:06and a lot of the Asian Pacific based investors actually want us to be in Hong Kong and I think
00:14for our marketing, for our branding and for our reach to the investors, it's a good stock market
00:21to be in. Are you bothered at all that this listing is happening on the same day as your
00:26competitor WeRide? How did this happen? No, I think it's just our process. It's about the
00:33same speed. So I'm actually super happy that both autonomous driving companies will be listed
00:40on the same day. It's actually a great thing that shows the market is recognizing that this
00:46is a business that's going to be actually has super growth down the road and that's be recognized
00:53as the market. So I think overall, it's a great thing to be celebrating this great moment
00:57on the same day. I wonder how much of this is also being pushed by the scrutiny in Washington
01:03because there has been lawmakers calling the SEC to delist some Chinese companies, including
01:09specifically Pony AI. So do you foresee Pony AI at some point delisting from the Nasdaq?
01:15No, I don't think that the risk of being delisted is high. Actually, we were planning for Hong Kong
01:25delisting before the news that there's some discussion about delisting Chinese based companies.
01:32So it's never our plan to do so. But if it happens, we at least have alternative and certainly this move to Hong Kong market also derisks the potential delisting.
01:49So tell me about your fundraising plans. How are you planning to deploy the funds? How much is it going to R&D and how much to fleet expansion?
01:56Oh, actually, this Hong Kong IPO, it was actually quite successful that we even originally anticipated because I think partly because our business is growing strong, partly because the investors recognizing our success.
02:15majority, about half of the funds mostly will be deployed for the growth and deployment of our robot taxi fleet. Half of the fund is for that purpose.
02:29Majority of the rest probably will continue for R&D because I think the safety and the advancements of our technology has always been and will continue to be our competitive mode.
02:42There has been some high profile accidents lately from Xiaomi and other companies. And as you said, while the Chinese government has been very fast in approving regulations, other global governments have been pretty wary of this technology.
02:54So how are you prepared to deal with regulatory pushbacks from global governments around safety concerns of autonomous driving?
03:02I think the best way is to prove ourselves. So because we have all the safety track record in the cities that we operated in and from our design itself, we actually have redundancy putting we have 360 degree of censoring coverage with actually as any single point, we make sure there's at least two sensors looking at it.
03:29And also from a safety design and the safety requirements point of view, we have all the design considerations and implementations and also the safety track record.
03:40So essentially, we'll present to the government for any government that will plan to enter.
03:48We'll show that we have all the design principles and we have good track record.
03:52What's your message to investors who are concerned that you still haven't reached profitability at this point? Why should they be betting on your company?
04:00We are already at the inflection point because the thing that for the last nine years, we were mainly focusing on R&D and we have made our product to be safe, to be economical, to be enjoyable by the users.
04:17And even more importantly, because we have a huge cost reduction on our Gen 7 vehicles, we will be able to reach per vehicle basis gross profit.
04:31That means every car we launch to the market, we can make money on it. And then the rest to have the company wide profitability.
04:40Then the problem just remains to be we launch more cars, continue to increase the gross margin.
04:47Then we should have at least in short, I think at least we have a clear path to the profitability for the whole company.
04:54So when do you think is that point when you can reach positive net income?
04:59By our rough estimation, it's about 50,000 vehicles. When we reach that level, then the whole company will be...
05:07Realistically, what's the timeline for that?
05:09Yeah, we think it can be like 28, 29 timeframe, but essentially towards the end of this decade.
Be the first to comment