On May 10, 2023, Li Auto released its first 2023 quarterly report. Despite facing a less-than-expected overall performance in the Chinese auto market, Li Auto's quarterly revenue and deliveries still hit record highs.
Li Auto Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "Li Auto", Chinese: 理想汽车), headquartered in Beijing, recently announced its first quarterly report. In Q1 2023, the company achieved revenue of CNY 18.79 billion (USD 2.70 billion), an increase of 96.5% year-over-year. Vehicle sales revenue was CNY 18.33 billion, 96.9% higher than in the previous year, and an increase of 6.1% from CNY 17.27 billion in Q4 2022.
Founded in 2015, Li Auto is a leading global manufacturer of new energy vehicles, dedicated to producing electric vehicles and smart mobility solutions. In Q1 2023, Li Auto delivered a total of 52,584 new vehicles to customers, up 65.8% year-over-year, achieving the best single-quarter delivery results. In April 2023, a total of 25,681 new cars were delivered by Li Auto, once again setting a new monthly record for the company. Driven by the strong delivery volume, RISO was among the top three new energy brands in China, above CNY 200,000 in sales in the first quarter, with a market share of about 11%, second only to BYD and Tesla.
Li Auto focuses on building global partnerships. In July 2022, RISO held the "2022 Global Partner Conference" in Changzhou, aiming to discuss the future development direction of smart mobility together with many famous partners around the world. In January 2023, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, issued a letter to all employees, which mentioned that the company is heading to be a global leader in the artificial intelligence industry by 2030.
In terms of R&D investment, Li Auto invested a total of CNY 1.85 billion in Q1 2023, up 34.8% year-on-year. In terms of intelligent space and intelligent driving, which are highly utilized by users, Li Auto has continuously improved its product power through the OTA upgrade method. Recently, L series models have completed two OTA version upgrades, 4.3 and 4.4, optimizing a total of over 100 functions.
The major competitors of Li Auto include Chinese companies such as BYD (Chinese: 比亚迪), NIO (Chinese: 蔚来) and XPeng (Chinese: 小鹏汽车), as well as international players such as Tesla from the US and Toyota from Japan.
Based on the industry trend, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, has said that the key to the development of the automotive industry is intelligence, the core of which is intelligent driving based on high-precision maps. He believes that in the future, intelligent cars will dismantle people's traditional perception of cars, and the fusion of electrification, networking and intelligence will produce a brand-new car system.
As of press time, Li Auto closed at CNY 204.73 apiece, with a market cap of CNY 213.39 billion.