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spk07: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the new technology's second quarter of 2021 earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Now for the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. And to ask a question during the session, you need to press star and the number one on your telephone. And please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker for today, Mr. Jason Yang. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
spk02: Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's conference call to discuss new technologies results for the second quarter 2021. The earnings press release, corporate presentation, and financial spreadsheets have been posted on news investor relations website. This call is being webcast from companies on our website, and the replay of the call will be available soon. Please note today's discussion will contain forelooking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forelooking statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors. The company actual results may be materially different from those expressed today. Further information regarding the risk factors is included in the company's public findings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forelooking statement, except as required by law. Our earnings press release and this call include discussions of certain non-GAF financial matters. The press release contains a definition of non-GAF financial matters and a reconciliation of GAF to non-GAF financial results. On the call with me today are our CEO, Dr. Yan Li, and the CFO, Mr. Hadi Zhang. Now let me turn the call to over Yan.
spk01: Thanks Jason and thanks everyone for joining us on the call today. So in the second quarter, we'll continue to see a strong growth in the China market as we continued our new product rollout and the retail expansions. We also achieved decent growth in the international market despite the ongoing challenges of COVID-19 and the global logistics. Our total sales volume reached nearly 253,000 units, an increase of 58% year-over-year. Sales in China reached 246,000 units, an increase of 59% year-over-year, while the volume in the international market reached nearly 7,000 units, a 35% increase year-over-year. We are attributing our Q2 growth to the three key strategic executions. our targeted retail expansions, the release of new products that appear to a wider customer demographics, and our targeted marketing campaigns and user-centric activities. Taking where we left off in Q1, in the second quarter of this year, we added another 450 new branded stores across China, reaching a total of 2,366 stores by June 30th. and also setting a record for the most stores we have ever opened in a single quarter. This nearly 2,400 stores will serve as a strong base to drive sales growth in Q3. For the international market, despite the challenges of COVID-19, we continue to add 26 flagship and premium stores, with our total flagship and premium stores number reaching 149, in addition to our 1,000 plus dealers. Now, as we mentioned in our last quarterly update, we held our global product launch in early April, where we introduced a large assortment of China international vehicles. We're happy to report that most of those products are now in the market or about to ship in the coming weeks. We are very excited about the speed that we can take products from concept to the market, giving us more agility to meet the demands of urban mobility market, both in China and abroad. One of the key products from April event is MQi2S. We began the sales of our M2S just a few weeks ago in late July. The new M2S is an upgrade of M2, the flagship product under the new China national standard for electric bicycles. The M2S is equipped with our latest smart IoT technologies, a color display with navigation that mirrors your mobile phone, and the OKGO system with distance sensing and keyless ignitions, and also our latest battery management system, New Energy 7.0, which increases the drive range. We launched the M2S with a starting price of RMB 5,600 up to 8,000 RMB. The market response has been great, especially in the top tier cities where the M2S is viewed as the most high-end electric bicycle product in the market. Now shifting our discussion to our huge popular Gowa series, the all-new Gowa S and the Gowa C series have allowed us to expand our offerings for the mid-tier product categories and helped us to quickly tap into an even larger total addressable market in China. The Gowa S series carry a more masculine design style and feature of new eagle eye headlights, which has been a hit with our new target demographics. As we mentioned in our last earning call, the Global S0 set the JD.com pre-sales record for urban mobility product and had a significant impact on our sales volume growth in Q2, accounting for 24% of our total sales volume in the quarter ending June 30th. The Global F2 has been a very popular product. Despite being launched in late May, the F2 accounts for 6% of our total sales volume in Q2. And we're also about to launch the Gova F4 electric motorcycle product in the next few days, priced from RMB $4,500 to $6,700. Now, one of the other products coming out of the April global launch was the Gova C0. The C0 was especially designed for female customers with multiple macaron dessert flavor, color choices, and a wide variety of accessories, taking into account the actual needs of women's daily commute. from appearance and configurations to performance. The C-Zero is equipped with our SkyEye hardware, allowing the C-Zero to be connected to our new app, just like our NMU series vehicles. The C-Zero has two versions, differentiated primarily by the riding range, a 50-kilometer standard range and 70-kilometer extended range options, affordably priced at RMB 3,400 and 3,800 RMB. We also upgrade our Goa G3 vehicle in order to better meet the riding habit of users in China's second and third tier market. The all-new G3 has been seeing a significant upgrade to performance thanks to the update we made on the hot motor, the controllers, as well as the low-resistance tires. The G3 now can get a 100-kilometer-plus of driving range on a single charge. Now, prior to those changes, the G3 accounted only for 5% of our total sales volume in Q2, but since our recent product update in July, the all-new G3 sales has quickly climbed to 16% of our total volume. The G3 is priced at RMB 3,700 to 4,000 RMB. We're also quite excited about our KQi3 kick scooters that were announced back in April. Just a few weeks ago, On July 13th, we launched our European and United States pre-sales for KQi3 on Indiegogo, an e-commerce platform. The KQi3 is our first product of more to come in the micromobility space, trying to tackle the last mile commute. Compared to the competition of the same $700 price point, the KQi3 offers a better performance, a more stable ride, and more color options. The KQI3 campaign on Indiegogo was fully funded in under five minutes and has raised over US dollar one million plus in sales in little over three weeks with the support of more than 1,800 backers. As of today, the pre-sales volume for KQI3 has exceeded 2,000 units plus and the delivery will start in Q3. Additionally, the wholesale orders for the end-of-year retail holiday sales in the United States and Europe are already being produced too. Now shifting gears a bit, the April Global Prada launch helped us to kick off a new cycle of domestic and international communications. The launch event alone garnered more than 1,000 publications across hundreds of domestic and international media outlets, firmly establishing our position as a global market leader in urban mobility. Beyond traditional media, our team continued to accelerate our growth and engagement on social media platforms. In the second quarter of Douyin and Kaishou, channels have attracted more than 54 million views, an increase of over 400% year-over-year. We believe capitalizing on those channels not only broadened our exposures, but more importantly, it's being paid off in sales. Now, I also want to share some very exciting news. we are very proud to announce that new scooter and moped are responsible for powering 10 billion kilometers of traveling globally. In just a few short weeks, we'll cross the 10 billion kilometer threshold, and we believe it is the important moment not just for new, but for the entire two-wheeled and the micro-mobility industry. This will be the first 10 billion kilometer ever recorded in the two-wheeler industry history. The 10-billion-kilometer milestone doesn't simply prove that each day more people choose new to make their daily commute, but it also shows more and more customers are pushing the boundaries of how and why they ride new. The milestone shows the aspiration of our new fans joining us to redefine urban mobility and make life better. It represents the strength and vitality of our brand, and when people think of urban mobility, they will first think of new. Now to celebrate the 10 billion kilometer milestone with our new fans, we launched a variety of brand campaigns partnering with China influencers and tapping into targeted TV ads to promote the new lifestyle. This was all coupled with the release of our all new limited edition NQI 10 billion kilometer scooter, paying homage to the original M1 that launched the brand in 2015. These activities are perfectly timed to amplify our brand messaging during the peak sales seasons of 2021 in China. Finally, I want to take a moment with some forward-looking state comments for Q3. We plan to keep our retail expansion momentum, adding another 300 plus stores in Q3 despite the hot sales season. We have also ramped up our production capacity and recently brought up the phase two of our factory online, increasing our annual capacity into more than 2 million vehicles. And this will provide a good support to the third quarter shipment. The increased capacity comes in just in time for our back to school promotions running from August to September this year. Now with the launch of new products, expansion of our sales channel, coupled with the assortment of peak season promotions, we are very excited about the weeks ahead in the China market. Now, for the international market, we're very excited with our successful launch of our KQI kick scooters and believe it will contribute significantly in our sales growth in the years ahead. However, in the near term, our international market continues to be hindered by the COVID-19 situation in the European market and the shortage and the much higher shipping costs which prevented us from supplying sufficient inventories for the retail sales in the international market. Now, I'll turn the call over to Hardy to discuss our financial results. Hardy.
spk03: Thank you, Yan, and hello, everyone. Our price release contains all the figures and comparations you need. We've also uploaded the Excel format figures to our IR website for easy reference. As I review our financial performance, we are referring to the second quarter figures unless I say otherwise, and that all monetary figures are to be unless otherwise noted. Our Q2 sales volume reached 253,000 units, representing a 58% year-over-year growth. China's sales volume increased by 59%, mainly driven by new product launch. The two new models, F0 and F2, started delivery in the second quarter. They contributed to 30% of our total sales volume. and are key drivers for the second quarter sales volume growth. International sales volume increased by 35%, slightly below our expectation. There are continued challenges from COVID-19 and international shipping. Both affected our sales and delivery to the international market. With regards to product mix, M series accounted for 11% of total sales volume. M series accounted for 14%. U Series accounted for 19% and Global Series accounted for 56%. Out of the 56% from Global Series, 30% was from the low-priced models G0 and F0. Remaining 26% was from other global models with relatively higher retail price. The overall product mix improved this quarter compared with Q1. Specifically, the percentage of sales volume from the low-price models G0, F0 reduced from 38% in Q1 to 30% in Q2. The improved product mix also led to a higher ESP this quarter compared with Q1. Total revenues increased by 47% to $945 million within the guidance we provided earlier. The quality of revenues improved this quarter with better product mix Besides the improved e-scooter product mix mentioned above, we also generated 130 million revenues from accessory spare partner services, representing a 98% year-over-year growth and accounting for 14% of our total revenues. The strong sales mainly came in from battery pack sales to sharing operators in the European market. Our ASP in Q2 declined by 7% year-over-year, but improved by 2% quarter-over-quarter. Let's look at the details. For China market, the scooter ASP decreased by 9% year-over-year, mainly due to the sales of low-priced model G0 and F0, which account for 30% of total sales volume compared with the 14% in Q2 last year. However, when compared with Q1, the ASP increased by 10% due to better product mix and also sales price increases. For international market, the scooter ASP decreased by 25%. There are three key reasons. First, depreciation of U.S. dollar against RMB affected ASP by around 8%. Second, the change in the way distributors place orders. Many distributors chose to place separate orders for scooter body and battery pack so as to save international shipping costs. As a result, battery pack sales were booked and the spare parts revenue instead of scooter revenue. This practice also happened in Q1 as we discussed in last earning call and expect to continue in future quarters. The impact from this practice was around 14%. Third, change in product mix affect our international ASP by around 3%. In summary, out of the 25% ASP decline, Around 14% was caused by the way of separate ordering. Around 8% was caused by depreciation of U.S. dollar and the remaining 3% from change in product mix. Comparing with Q1, our ASP for international market increased by 6% due to change in product mix. The ASP of accessory spare passenger services was 512 per scooter. a 25% increase compared with Q2 last year. Out of the 25% increase, 9% was due to the change in the way of placing orders we just talked about. The remaining 16% was due to strong sales of battery packs to sharing operators. Growth margin was 22.7%, 0.3 percentage points lower than this time last year, mainly due to three reasons. First, the higher percentage of sales from low-margin models reduced our margin by around 1.3%. Second, higher spare part sales to international market improved our margin by around 1.7%. Third, the higher raw material cost from commodity price increase reduced our margin by around 0.7%. The raw material cost increase continued into Q3 But the good news is, since August, some of the key component costs, for example, battery pack, began to decline. We may still see some cost pressure in the third quarter, but from fourth quarter, we expect the cost decline will benefit our margin. Our total opening expense, including share-based compensation, was $125 million, increased by $43 million, or 53% year-over-year. The increase was mainly caused by higher sales and marketing expense of $11 million for branding and advertisement, higher depreciation expense of $9 million for new store openings, and $15 million for staff cost. As percentage of revenues, our opening expense, excluding share-based compensation, was 13.2%, 0.5% higher than Q2 last year, mainly due to higher depreciation from new store openings. In the month of May, we received a total $41 million government grant, out of which $21 million was booked into income statement in the second quarter. The remaining will be booked in the following quarters. Our net income was $92 million, a 62% increase year over year. The adjusted net income was $104 million, and the adjusted net margin was 11%, 0.5% higher than the same period last year. we are pleased to deliver a profitable quarter with improved net margin. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow, we ended the quarter with RMB 1.2 billion in cash, term deposits, and short-term investment. Our operating cash flow was positive 287 million, much higher than our net income. Our Q2 cash expenditure was around 83 million, mainly related to capacity expansion of 21 million and new store buildings of 52 million. Now, let's turn to guidance. We expect third quarter revenues to be in the range of RMB 1.25 billion to 1.45 billion, an increase of 40% to 62% year over year. With that, let's now open the call for any questions that you may have for us. Operator, please go ahead.
spk07: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone and to withdraw your question, please press the pounder hash key and please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Once again, please press star one for your questions. First question is from the line of Vincent Yu of Milan and Company. Please go ahead. The line is open.
spk04: Thanks, management, for taking my question. I have three questions. The first question is, with offline retail stores expanding at a fast pace, the scooter sales volume in China is somewhat soft in the second quarter. Any reason behind this discrepancy that management can shed some light on? My second question is, In terms of international shipping, management already shared the impact from international shipping on ASP in second quarter sales results. Is there any other impact on our second sales results the management want to share? And will we continue to see such impact in second half? My third question is about the guidance. So there's about a RMB 200 million difference between our guidance top and the bottom. So, the band for third quarter is not more. So, what is factored in this difference? Is that something to do with the data student regulation or any other reason? Thanks.
spk01: Again, Vincent, thanks for the question. So I think, let me make sure I get the first question clear. It's saying, with the fast store expansion, Q2 versus Q1, you're saying that the volume increase is incomparable with the expansion? So I didn't fully get what your first question is about.
spk04: Oh, yeah. So it's like softer than I think we expected because the offline retail store is expanding at a relatively like faster pace. So are we seeing like the stores need to be mature in a relatively longer time time or like, do we show we see like these stores mature in the in third quarter or like in anything that we can share on that front?
spk01: Yeah, I think you hit the right point. I think typically when we open the store, because you look at, it really depends on, you know, even though we're saying, you know, versus with Q1, Q2 versus Q1, we add about 450 stores, but it actually depends on which month of the store are open. So usually with the new store opening, it would take roughly about a quarter or so to have the stores to get to sort of a right operating pace. So I think that's where you actually start to see, as I mentioned, that the Q2 store, the end of Q2 stores, they are actually a very strong basis for our Q3 growth. Because as those stores open in Q2, they started getting a bit of traction, getting to mature, and sort of the fully operation, that's where the Q3 results will come in. And on the second, international shipment, I mean, I think to be honest, yes, we do observe a, right now we see an obstacle in two things. One is actually shortage. of the international shipping containers. And second is actually even when you're able to book the containers, the per container cost used to be $6,000 and now it's actually raised up as high as $18,000. So it's actually 3x of what we observed in the past. And on per container basis, we used to be able to get roughly about 40 scooters per container. So that's actually, you talk about, it's almost about $150 into my shipping cost. Now, instead of $150, it become $450 per unit shipping cost. I think this is actually the issue we have observed for the past two quarters. And those are the issues because some of our international orders, we have a backlog of almost 4,000 units we're not able to ship in Q2 because of lack of container and because of there's a high shipping cost where our distributors or importers in Europe and United States sort of are patching or waiting for the shipping cost to decline a bit before to ship more. So this is part of the obstacle we're facing right now. So I think the company is looking for one, you know, working with the distributors and to see whether there's a possible way for us and together work with them to subsidize some of the shipping cost increases. And second, whether this will be reflected into the retail prices of our international product.
spk03: Yeah, and for your third question on the guidance, why we still have quite a wide range There's a few factors when we consider giving this guidance. The biggest one who brings some kind of uncertainty is whether the replacement demand will kick in already in September. For example, in Beijing, the Beijing local government already announced Since October, November, the regulatory authority will start going on the street to check people's scooters, whether they're in compliance or not, whether they have replaced to the right plate for their electric bicycles. So we expect some of the customers, we take the ultimate promotion in September to early replace their bicycles. If that kicks in quickly, then we are able to meet the higher end of our guidance. So this is one of the biggest elements when we're giving the guidance. On top of that, of course, there are also quite a few other factors. One is COVID-19. We see some rebound in China. Some of the streets were closed because of the COVID. It looks like in the next one to two weeks, some of the streets, some of the places may have relaxed their policy, allowed people to come to the shops again. But again, there's some uncertainty about COVID. Also, there's also uncertainty with the international shipping, whether we get sufficient capacity to ship all the backlog orders within the third quarter. So there's a few reasons behind why we are giving a quite wide range. This is the answer to your third question, Winston.
spk04: Got it. Very clear. Thank you very much.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Ben Wang of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. The line is open.
spk00: Thank you. I also got three ones. The first one is about the July performance and the first half of August. What's the roughly sales growth in terms of volume? That's number one. Number two is about the C0 margin. I know this one is much more expensive compared to G0 and G5. And what's the roughly gross margin we can anticipate for this C0 because this may be going to a new segment, a very important driver for the future. And the last one is about the sector. Investors seem to be worried about the sector demand. Alone, you have a very decent growth, but the sector seems to be flat in the second quarter. So what's the reason about the flattish sector production, and what's your forecast for the second half of the sector demand? Thank you.
spk03: So I will comment first and then I will let Ian to add further comments. For your first question, I believe you are asking about how we see the sales volume momentum in August. So far in the first 15 days, we already see very strong retail sales as well as orders coming from our distributors. Because in August, the peak season already started, and also the flooding in China, they are gone. So we see more and more people coming back to the street. They began to buy new scooters. So in August, we do see very, very strong growth, not only from our orders, but also from the retail sales. Your second question is about our growth margin for the C0. The margin is around 15%, very similar to what we saw in G0 and F0. But with... The ramping up of the production, when we get more and more orders of the raw materials, we may see potential, the margin may go up to 20%. But in the short term, it's still around 15%, similar to other products. Comments on the third question about the sector growth. What we saw is in April, based on the information from MIT, the industry grew by around 29%. In May, the industry grew by almost flat. So combined, April and May, the industry grew by around 18%. We're still waiting for June numbers coming out by the authority. But we do believe the industry continues to have a double digital growth in the second quarter. As you can see, we are growing our China sales volume by close to 60%. For the second half of this year, we do believe the market will continue to grow, but it depends on which location and which geography we are. I think some of the Tier 1, Tier 2 cities, especially where the new regulation, the new standards were strictly enforced, we do believe the growth will continue very strong. For example, we talk about Beijing. Beijing will begin to check the scooter, whether they're in compliance or not. In this case, we do believe many customers will begin to replace their scooters This also applies to other cities where the new regulation is strictly enforced. But in the lower tier cities where the new regulation was not strictly enforced, then because of the very high base last year, the growth rate may not be as fast as what we saw last year. For new technologies, around 70% to 80% of our sales volume coming from the top 30 cities, they are mainly tier 1, tier 2 cities. So we think we are in a very good market geography, in terms of geography. Therefore, we do believe our sales volume will continue to grow very fast in the second half. So this is a comment to your third question.
spk01: I think Hardy covers pretty well on this one.
spk00: Can you quantify the April very good, what very good means in the number? Thank you.
spk03: What's your question? You mean April numbers?
spk00: No, August. You just mentioned August is very good. So can you provide some quantifying that very good in August?
spk03: In August, we are looking to double our sales volume. In August, we have doubled our sales volume compared with August last year. But part of the reason is because some of the orders were not able to ship out in July because of the flooding. Maybe also because of the hurricane in Shanghai. But even after that, we will see very, very strong orders coming in August.
spk00: Okay, great. Thank you so much. Great.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Winnie Dong of Piper Center. Please go ahead. The line is open.
spk05: Hi. Thank you in advance for taking my question. I was wondering if you can comment on the gross margin trajectory, you know, already provided some puts and takes in the quarter. Do you see a way to push this metric back to the mid-20s? That's my first question. And then my second question is on the international markets. I think in previous times, during your honors college, you guys have mentioned Southeast Asia as a key market. Can you please provide an update there Is that still the case? What kind of momentum are you guys driving right now? Thanks.
spk03: Yeah. I think let me first comment on the growth margin. I think in Q4, let's say this way, in Q4, we do believe we have a high chance to get our margin back to mid-20s. But in Q3, we will continue to see some of the cost pressure. First of all, our business has a certainality. If you look at the Q3 margins, each year Q3 margin is always the lowest. Compared with Q2, if you look at the year 2019, 2020 numbers, the Q3 gross margin is around 2% below Q2 margin. So if we take the late year Q2 at 22.7%, then we minus 2%, then it's 20.7%. And also because some of the procurement cost for raw materials It's still very high in May, June, and also July, so we will still have some burdens in the third quarter to absorb all the inventories. The good news is that since August, some of the raw material costs began to decline, especially the battery cost. Some of the battery costs that we buy, their costs are already down by more than 10% compared with the peak time. Therefore, that's why I think in Q3 we see some continued pressure mainly because of the inventory we bought earlier. But in Q4, if this trend continues, we do believe we have a good chance to get back to mid-20s in terms of gross margin. For the international market, also on the South Asian market, I'd like Yan to comment on it.
spk01: Yeah, I think, so as we talked in the previous calls, basically I think if you look at the first couple quarters in this year, I think the main focus is still on the European and the United States markets, and those probably still represent a huge majority sales of our international market. On the Southeast Asia market, we'll continue to explore different options in terms of Southeast Asia market. We start to We started to open about four or five stores in Jakarta this year. And also, we started to roll up two products. It's our M1, also our G3 product for the Southeast Asian market this year. So, so far, I mean, the sales have been relatively soft because the two products right now still, even the cheapest G3 product still prices somewhere around $1,600. which is slightly more than what we're hopeful in order to enter that market. So I think there's two things we're looking at. One is a continued decline of the lithium batteries, especially the LFP batteries cost that help us to really to drive the retail price down of the G3 product to somewhere around $1,300 to $1,400. I think that's where we're going to see a tipping point among that market. So I think we're looking at probably not in the Q4 this year. We'll be sometime mid-next year where we're actually able to see, you know, such a cost decline and able to pick up that, you know, sort of all the sales in that market.
spk05: Great. Thank you so much.
spk07: Thank you. Next question is from the line of Jing Chang of CICC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk06: Thank you for taking my question. So I have another three questions. The first, I think that we can still see the young year decline on the U-theory and M-theory cells. And the global series has been on the market for more than one year. So previously, we may focus in the future the high-end market space or penetration rate with price of above 35,000 RMB, maybe can get to 15% to 20% in the market in the longer term. So have we adjusted our focus of the high-end market space? This is my first question. And second is that recently, I think with the long-term many new products by our peer brands and also the expansion of our own stores. Do we feel more competition mainly reflected on the single-store sales? Can we still see some growth on the single-store sales level? And also last year, since first quarter last year, we began to open more stores quickly at a higher speed. So how are the operating possibilities of the new stores compared with the old stores? My last question is for our new kick scooters product, also has been sold in the European market in July. So what is our future positioning of this new product business? Can we expect the sales to maybe reach 1 million in maybe two to three years and to become a major driver of ourselves.
spk01: Yeah. Okay, I'll try to cover the question one and four and then I'll have Hardy to comment on the per store sales part and I'll comment on that one. So first one, I think my understanding is the question is about the focus on the high-end markets. I think if you look at the first half of the year, yes, because you look at most of our product rollout for the first half of the year, the first two queues are around the GOVA series, basically the S series, the C series, the upgraded G series. So that doesn't mean that the company changed the focus, say, hey, we started doing mid-end product, not neglecting the high-end products. It's really just how the product rollout, you know, the new product rollout is being time-framed. So the M2S basically we view as our basically the most high-end product in terms of electric bicycle product. That product just rolled out in mid-July and actually started receiving quite a bit of orders from the top-tier cities. So it's an upgrade of our M2 product last year. And then in Q4 this year, we're actually also going to have a couple of really high-end motorcycle products rolled out for the China market as well as for the international market. So it just happened to, in the first half of the year, we actually had more mid-end products that are being sort of front-loaded in the first half of the year. So starting second half of the year and also early 2022, you're going to expect we'll actually have more high-end product roll-out for the electric bicycle as well as the electric motorcycle markets. So this is really just a product roll-out timing issue. On the fourth one, I think absolutely yes. So if you look at our initial kick scooter, I think the questions about kick scooters and the future expectation on kick scooters I think it depends on what you look at the market rate for. So it's anywhere the sales volume for the kick scooter globally is anywhere between 5 million units to 7 million units. It depends on where do you factor in the kids' ones or not the kids' ones. So I do think that it's possible for us in the next few years to get to the one-minute units for the kick scooters. If you look at our first KQi3, that's the kick scooter that we did a launch on Indiegogo. It's basically a crowdfunding website, and we quickly able to get more than 2,000 units orders. And keep in mind that the people who ordered those kick scooters, they didn't even see the product, the real product. They only saw the picture of it. And also, the orders won't be delivered to them until literally starting August or September, where they actually put in money in July and August. So they had to wait for a couple months for the product to come in. So With those things, we still managed to actually get more than 2,000 orders, so it actually demonstrated our strong capability in the product design as well as the kick scooter is gaining attraction from our global users. Obviously, having a single product line for that kick scooter wouldn't get us the one-minute units. So I think in our product pipeline, we actually have about two or three more product lines or product tiers in that kick scooter anywhere between from a cheaper product to a more expensive product to provide a wider range of kick scooter product that will allow us to get to the one-minute units. I think that's sort of a near-future target that we're setting ourselves up. Now, I'll have Hardy to talk about a little bit on the same store sales and the stores.
spk03: Yeah. For the same store sales, definitely, I think one, the company opens the store very fast. We do see the same store sales declining. But we believe the store growth is a leading indicator. So you really need to think about this kind of investment the company puts today. In the future, you're going to see it help the company to at least to higher volume growth. I can give you a few examples, a few numbers. For example, if you look at Q2 2019. In Q2 2019, we opened only around 130 stores. And in Q2 this year, we opened around 450 stores. But if you calculate the same store sales, they are the same. So we didn't really see the fast growth of our stores may make our same store sales less competitive compared with what we delivered before. So this is one number you can use as a reference. Secondly, as I mentioned, building new stores, they always have time for the store to mature. Therefore, it's kind of a leading indicator for us to think about what the sales volume we are going to have in six months' time, in 12 months' time. Therefore, we need to prepare for that to open more and more stores. In year 2018, Back in 2018, because we are very busy with listing in the U.S., we opened only around 300 stores in 2018. Because of the slow opening of stores in 2018, kind of did not support our very fast growth in 2019. So that's another example you can think about. Short-term, fast-opening stores will, in some way, make our sales looks better. not very good, but we do believe that's a very important investment we need to do if we are looking for long-term growth for our company. So this is one way you can look at the numbers. Secondly, the store is also a very important resource. The location is very important for when we sell to end customers. We also take this opportunity in China to grab some of the very best locations, therefore can position ourselves with a very good growth perspective in the future. Today, some of other competitors, they also released their second quarter results. If you compare our results with their results, you'll see the difference. I think because we are willing to invest in the retail network expansion, that's because we have more confidence to grow our sales volume in the next few quarters. So this is the comments to you, questions on the same-store sales.
spk06: Okay, got it. Thank you for all your responses. Yes.
spk07: Thank you. Once again, for those who wish to ask a question, please press star and the number 1 on your telephone keypads and wait for your name to be announced. For your questions, please press star 1 and wait for your name to be announced.
spk00: Okay.
spk07: There are no further questions. I'd now like to hand the conference back to the presenters. Please continue.
spk01: All right. Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating in today's call for your support. We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Thank you.
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