Niu Technologies

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the new technologies second quarter 2022 earnings release conference call at this time all participants are in listen only mode after the speaker's presentation there will be the question and answer session to ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised please be advised that today's conference is being recorded I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Wendy Zhao. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's conference call to discuss new technologies results for the second quarter 2022. The earnings press release, corporate presentation, and financial spreadsheets have been posted on our investor relations website. This call is being webcast from company's IR website as well, and a replay of the call will be available soon. Please note today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Dedication Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors. The company's actual results may be materially different from those expressed today. Further information regarding the risk factors is included in the company's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law. Our earnings press release and this call include discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. The press release contains a definition of non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results. On the call with me today are our CEO, Dr. Yan Li, and CFO, Ms. Bian Zhou. Now let me turn the call over to Yan.

Thanks, Wendy, and thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call today. In Q2 2022, we delivered a mixed result in the China and international market. Total sales volume was down by 17.4% year-over-year. The total sales volume in an international market was up by an impressive 200% year-over-year, reaching nearly 29,000 units, mainly driven by the growth in the new category of kick scooters. However, the total sales volume in the China market was down by 26.7% year-over-year, for China market was severely affected by the COVID-19 resurgence. Now, in the China market, COVID infection spiked starting early April and affected throughout the entire quarter. The lockdown halted pretty much all business operations in the cities like Shanghai and severely slowed down the most in others like Beijing. New sales are highly concentrated in the higher tier cities, which were impacted by the COVID more significantly, as top tier cities account for 35 to 55% of total sales in the China market. In addition, the lockdown in Shanghai also caused months of delay in new product development, as our R&D center is based in Shanghai. This has impacted our sales performance in Q2 as well as in Q3, as quite a few key new products that upgrades originally scheduled in Q2 were delayed to late August. For the international market in Q2, sales of kick scooters continue to grow rapidly in the overseas market, growing by 112% quarter over quarter. During the Amazon Prime Day promotions, New was ranked number one on apps and best sellers in the KickScooter categories in Canada, Germany, and France. And it ranked top three in Spain, US, and Italy market. We're excited to see that in less than a year since we launched the first KickScooter product, we have already established our reputation as top sellers in the European and US market online. With the strong performance from online sales, we're also expecting sales ramping up in the offline channels, as those usually takes more time. Now delayed by the COVID, we finally launched three new electric bicycle products for China in August. The revolutionary SQI, the new UQI Plus, and the B2. I'll expand on the new products in detail. The SQI is positioned as our most high-end product in the China electric bicycle product category with its innovative design and cutting-edge technology and materials. The SQI has a futuristic straddle motorcycle-like look. With a clearly cut geometric body frame and large 70 inch wheels, it represents an unconventional design for electric bicycles, yet still meeting the China New Standard. In order to meet the weight requirement, we adopted a high performing aerospace magnetism alloy material as a body frame, the first in the electric bicycle market. With this unique design, the SQI has quickly gained attention from media and the users across China. According to some media, the SQI has pushed the product innovation limit in the electric bicycle market. The SQI is priced from RMB 8,999 to RMB 9,599, and it will be in production in November. We launched a pre-sale campaign on August 2nd, and within the first 10 days after launch, nearly 9,000 pre-orders were made. Along with the launch of SQI, we also announced a collaboration with Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers. We released a limited edition of a new prop Razer co-branded SQI, which is designed to embody new innovative design and Razer's signature logo as Razer's green brand color. The 299 limited new Razer SQI were priced at RMB $9,999 and all 299 scooters pre-ordered were sold out during the launch event in just two seconds. We see great synergy in this co-branding as they put together a new unique design with Razor's gaming. We also launched a co-branded NQi GT as we plan to sell the new Cross Razor NQi GT in the overseas market. Now our U series is one of the two products that has won all seven international design awards in mobility category. The original U1 was released in 2017 and the U-PLUS at US were released in 2019. Together, they accounted for nearly 25% of sales. Although remaining at the top selling series, the design functionalities needed upgrade after five years in the market. We launched a brand new UQi+, which inherited the design styles of the classic users, but improved significantly on many aspects, such as the light design, the smart control system, the writing economics, and additional functionalities for personalization. The new U Plus user uses the hollow halo light, the first of its kind in the industry, making it easier recognizable riding on the street. It has two additional side tail lights compared with the previous version, making it safer to ride in the dark at night. It's compatible with our upgraded intelligence system, the OK Go, which enables complete senseless control. Users can start the scooter, open the seat box and storage box with just their cell phones in the pocket. In addition, the new OK Go features now can be activated with Siri, which users can start and control the scooter with Siri voice commands. The upgraded intelligent system made the new U Plus a most user-convenient scooter to ride around. In terms of riding economics, we also improved the seating and decking design to make riding more comfortable. The new U Plus has increased the legroom and lowered the seat height, making it comfortable for users with various heights. The new UQI scooter has a drive range up to 95 kilometers on one charge. Now the biggest highlight on the design of the new EQI Plus are the interchangeable exoskeleton frame and the magnetic panel on the side, opening up countless possibilities for personalization. We see many of our customers choose to personalize their scooter parts to make their scooter represent their own taste. We believe by opening up the designing and the creation of the decorated parts to our users, we further encourage the expression of their unique lifestyle. Now, the brand new U Plus is priced from RMB 5,299 to 7,499. The third product we released is our B2, a large electric bicycle for the mid-end price range market in China, priced from RMB 3,999 to 4,999. The B2 comes with a simplistic design style, but with a large form factor. It's about 20% to 30% larger than our G2 and S2, which were released in 2020 and 2021. The G2 and S2, as part of two series, are among the most popular mid-end market products in our portfolio. Together, those two models accounted for 22% of sales in China. The addition of B2 completes the product offering targeting the mid-end market by having a large full factory design with a longer deck area and a bigger storage box. Large form factor makes it comfortable to ride with, bigger legroom, and also enable additional baby seat, making it more practical scooters for daily use. It is also equipped with basic intelligence systems, such as GPS locationing, the NFC, and the new app access. Now, the three new models covered a wide range of market segments in China. The SQI with its unique design reinforced news brand as the innovation leader in the industry. The new U-plus enhanced news product offerings in the high-end segments, and the new B-2 with the enlarged form factor that enabled practical design completes our product offerings targeting the mass segments. We see potential of those products become not only just news next splash product, but also product that leads market trend. Now, along with the new product launches in August, we have organized a series of of marketing and branding campaigns via PR, social media, PR collaborations, and user events. We held various press release events and invited nearly more than 100 media partners to test-ride and to cover up new product launches. Those 100 media events have published more than 200 articles. On the social media platform, we collaborate with nearly 60 tech and lifestyle influencers and KOLs with large fan bases to create content showcasing our new scooters. The KOL-generated content together gained more than 170 million views across all platforms after launch. Our product launches have also reached Weibo hotlist on August 2nd and August 9th, gaining a total of 570 million views with more than 400,000 discussions. When the initial Weibo topic of urban commute with electric scooter is better than driving to introducing our new scooters and it soon become a phenomenon with more than 200 million views. Those huge media exposures served as testimony on the market reactions to our newly launched product, but also further improved our brand image as an innovative leader in the urban mobility market in China. Now turning to the overseas market as our sales volume keeps growing, We put in continuous effort in the marketing and to enhance our brand recognition as a global leader in the urban mobility sector. In this quarter, the new product review video has more than 7 million views on YouTube globally. We also actively participate in events and exhibitions worldwide, making global appearance, showcasing our products and brand values. We'll participate in Electrify Expo, the largest electric vehicle festival in North America in Los Angeles. And we will continue to be a main exhibitor at the Electrify Expo event throughout 2022. Our products also made its appearance during the Bike Shed Show in London, which is Europe's biggest independent annual motorcycle show. New was among the few exhibitors that exhibited with electric motorcycles, bringing diversity to the traditional gas-fuel motorcycle. With those exhibition events, we hope to gain global recognition in the industry. Finally, I want to give a prospect on the coming quarters. In the first half of 2022, we faced great challenges, both from the rising raw material prices, especially in the lithium-ion batteries, and from sudden COVID resurgence and lockdown in some of the major cities in China. This has impacted our sales volume, created pressure in our gross margin, and also caused delay in our new product rollout, as mentioned earlier. For the China market, we remain cautious with the outlook. As we put the 2022 first half behind us and announced three new products, the SQI, the UQI+, and the B2E in August, we have received very positive response from the market and media. Those new products will help to fuel the growth in late Q3 and Q4 2022. Having said that, we remain cautious with the sales rebound in Q3 due to unclear COVID impacts, and temporary slowdown in retail sales introduced by the lithium-ion battery price hike. The COVID resurgence in various cities has created temporary impact on our sales, with the most recent one in Hainan, which accounted for 4% of sales last year. The sharp rise of lithium-ion battery prices has caused the lithium-ion based scooter to price up across the industry. In Q2, we have increased our product price by average 7%. Increase on the lithium-ion batteries across the industry has also created temporary lithium-ion scooter demand decline in some tier 2 and tier 3 cities, where the lead-acid-based scooters remain to be a cheaper and more viable alternative. We have observed a temporary trend of user purchasing preferences switching from lithium-ion to lead-acid scooters in some cities like Jinan, Nanjing, and Foshan. However, we expect a return in demand as the price for lithium-ion batteries stabilizes to the normal level and new regulations being more strictly enforced. Now, for the international market, we continue to be very optimistic with the sales growth, especially the new category expansion in kick scooters and e-bikes. For kick scooters, besides the current K3 and K2 series, we're introducing several new series in the second half of this year to complete the kick scooter product offerings. We also have e-bike models ready for rollout in the coming quarters in the US and European markets. On the China expansion, we're actively expanding our offline sales network. By end of quarter three, we plan to grow our point of sales to nearly 2,000 stores in the US and Europe, supporting the robust growth in the sales and preparing for the holiday seasons. We expect to see sales further ramp up in the global market as we expand our product portfolio and establish our sales network. Now I'll turn the call over to Fian, our CFO, to go through our financial results.

Thank you, Yan. And hello, everyone. Before going through the financials, we are pleased to present our inaugural ESG report on the IR website today, highlighting our ESG achievements made over the past several years. While it details the company's performance in several key areas, including low-carbon operations green manufacturing, technology innovation, cooperate governance, care for employees, and cooperation with partners and peers. Valuing this report as the symbol of entering to the new chapter of ESG development for NIU, we have been acknowledging our responsibilities as a member of community and will continue to make conscious contributions to society in a number of ways going forward. While dedicating to economic growth, we also hope to enhance our communication with stakeholders to make a constructive input on environmental protection and low-carbon economy promotion. Back to the financial results, please note that our press release contains all the figures and comparisons you need, and we have also uploaded Excel-format figures to our IR website for your 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 RMB unless otherwise noted. In the second quarter, we delivered a mixed result. Total sales volume fell 17.4% to 209,000 units on a year-over-year basis. out of which 180,000 was from China market, representing a 26.7% decrease year over year, we were more exposed to and adversely affected by lockdown in top tier cities. Unlike peers, our retail network is a lot more concentrated among them, where strict control measures mostly happen. International market contributed to robustive growth by kick-scooter sales ramped up. Total sales volume reached nearly 29,000 units, increased by more than three-fold year-over-year, among which kick-scooter sales volume doubled to 21,000 quarter-over-quarter, a record high since its launch in the third quarter last year. Meanwhile, e-motorcycles and e-moped sales volume reached by nearly 10% to more than 7.7 thousand units. In the second quarter, our total revenue were 828 million, down by 12.4% year-over-year, while blended schoolers in the ASP increased more than 10%, from 3,222 to 3,557 year-over-year. To break down revenues by region, e-schoolers' revenue generated from China markets was $597 million, a year-over-year decrease of 21.2%, representing 8.3% of total schoolers' revenue. ASP in China markets reached a 3309, 7.5% higher year-over-year and 7.7% higher quarter-over-quarter, mainly due to increase in retail prices and a better product mix. Talking now about product mix, NIU Series and Global Premium Series together accounted for 76.7% of total domestic sales volume this quarter. But Global Entry Series only accounted for 23.3%, the lowest level quarterly since 2021. Overseas eSquares revenue grew by 1.5 times to $146 million. out of which 78 million were from Nemo cycle and Nemo path, and 68 million were from kick scooters. Blended ASP of international market decreased by 37.7% year-over-year to 5147, but rose by 14% quarter-over-quarter. It is a combination of kick scooters and Nemo path. If we look at them separately, Both categories see year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter ASP increases. For e-mopeds and e-motorcycles, ASP rose by nearly 24% year-over-year to over RMB 10,000 due to a higher proportion of premium models. For kick scooters, the better product mix and increase of retail price both contributed to a much higher ASP. Revenue for accessories, spare parts, and services were $85 million, down 34.6% year over year, from 13.7% to 10.2% of total revenues. This decrease was due to the same reasons we stated in the first quarter. Rising prices of battery and high freight costs have deterred our international distributors from purchasing spare battery packs. and we perceive it may not recover in the near term. Growth margin of this quarter was 20.3%, 2.4 PPT lower on a year-over-year basis, but 1.2 PPT higher than the first quarter this year. Quarter-over-quarter retail price increase contributed to this 1.2 PPT margin increase against the elevating cost of inflation this year. While on a year-over-year basis, out of the 2.4 ppt decrease, 1.4 ppt was due to the cost pressure, including raw material cost inflation and hiking freight fees. 0.7 ppt was contributing to a higher proportion of kick-scooter sales, which have relatively lower margins. And the remaining 0.3 PPT was from the decline of non-schooler sales contribution to total sales. Our total operating expenses for the second quarter was 173 million, 26.4% higher than the same period last year. Operating expenses as a percentage of revenue was 20.9%, compared with 14.5% year over year. Going into details about expenses, total selling and marketing expenses was RMB $93 million, $24 million higher year over year, mainly due to the increase on depreciation of new stores opening from last year. Research and marketing and development expenses were $45 million, $14 million higher than last year. The majority of the increase was due to $10 million higher staff costs, including share-based compensation, $3 million higher design and testing expenses. As we are expanding our product portfolio, we will continue to invest in talent, professionals, and other R&D resources to support our technology development. G&A expenses were $36 million. $1.2 million lower than last year. A $11 million foreign exchange gain offset by staff costs and provisions resulted in a decline in G&A. Total operating expenses, including share-based compensation or non-debt expenses, were $157 million, increased by 25.3% year-over-year and represented 18.9% of revenue. Q2, the net income was $14.4 million compared with $91.8 million in the second quarter of 2021. The net income margin was 1.7% compared with 9.7% in the same period of 2021 and minus 5.1% in the fourth quarter of this year. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow, we ended the quarter with $861 million in cash, term deposits, and short-term investments, and $189 million in respective cash. Our operating cash flow was negative $73 million, mainly due to $126 million increase in inventories of kick scooters. Same as the way that consumer electronics from Chinese manufacturers are sold overseas, For kick scooters, we established overseas warehouses, stocked up locally to ensure a fast turnover when orders came in. Capital expenditures for the second quarter was $15 million, compared to $83 million in the same period last year. Now let's turn to guidance. Since uncertainty remains over the pace of economic recovery, We expect a third quarter revenue to be in the range of RMB 1.17 billion to 1.35 billion, a decrease of 5% to an increase of 10% year over year. For the full year volume guidance, we prudently adjusted the estimates to 1 million to 1.2 million units. Please be aware that this outlook is based on information available and of the date and reflect the company's current and preliminary expectation, which is subjected to changes due to uncertainties relating to various factors, such as the pace of COVID-19 pandemic recovery, among others. Within that, we'll now open the call for any questions that you may have for us. Operator, please go ahead.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and 11 on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad.

Dear speakers, there are no questions at this time. Please continue.

Dear participants, as a last reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone keypad. Dear speakers, there are no further questions, and I would like to hand over back to yourself for the closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating in today's call and for your support. We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress. Thank you.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect. Have a nice day.