ECARX - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to ECARX Q3 2023 earnings conference call. I would now like to hand the conference over to Rene Du, Head of Investor Relations of ECARX. Please go ahead.

Rene Du (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. With me today are ECARX Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ziyu Shen, Chief Operating Officer, Peter Cirino, and Chief Financial Officer, Phil Zhou. Following their prepared remarks, they will be able to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows. Please note, today's call is being recorded. Before we start, I would like to refer you to our forward-looking statements at the bottom of our earnings press release, which also applies to this call. Further information on specific risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially can be found in our filings with the SEC. In addition, this call will include discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release, which contains a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measure to GAAP measure.

With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Ziyu.

Ziyu Shen (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Rene. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter's earnings call. Let me start by saying a few words about China market. This quarter saw again a growing share of NEVs sold versus ICE vehicles, and the trend is clearly accelerating with global NEV adoption rates reached a record high at 90.8% in the third quarter. This year, China is well positioned to become the largest automotive exporter in the world. This year is also likely to be the first year where domestic brands will outsell foreign brands in China. One of the important trends that we all witnessed this quarter was the launch of car-specific mobile phones, whose OS seamlessly integrates into the vehicle's ecosystem to create a value experience. With Meizu, we are pursuing a similar integration strategy.

At ECARX, we delivered another strong quarter of growth with revenue up 50% year-on-year, as we continue to benefit from increased spending by OEMs on enhancing the in-car experience and meeting consumer demand for greater connectivity and more sophisticated digital cockpit technologies. There are now over 5.6 million vehicles on the road that incorporate our technology across 24 brands offered by our 15 automotive OEM customers. Vehicles on the roads equipped with our products increased 8% from last quarter and 31% from the same period last year. With our dedicated team of over 2,000 people, 70% of whom are engineers, we are firmly positioned as a leading tech provider in the industry.

I'm pleased to report that we further expanded our customer base outside the Geely Group in China during the quarter with Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën Automobile, the joint venture between Dongfeng and Stellantis, coming on board as a significant customer in August. We also added six design wins for flagship car models in the third quarter, paving the way for further growth, which I will let Peter go over in more detail later. Internationally, Chinese EV makers and technology suppliers have truly arrived on the global stage following their massive presence at the IAA Mobility show in Munich in September. We are investing significant resources into growing our business and presence outside of China, and I have several key milestones coming up that will significantly raise our visibility internationally, including the upcoming launch of the Volvo EX30. That will feature our digital cockpit solution.

The recent debut of the Lynk & Co 08 SUV, equipped with our full stack solution, is a great showcase for the full range of technologies we have to offer as our industry profile continues to grow. We are also attracting increased attention as a technology provider within the mobility space through the ecosystem partnerships we announced with Baidu and Mobileye this quarter. In summary, we delivered a very strong quarter, both from a commercial, technology, and ecosystem point of view. I will now pass call over to Peter, who will go through the operating results for the quarter in more details.

Peter Cirino (COO)

Thank you, Ziyu, and good day, everyone. Our innovative product portfolio enabled us to secure a number of new design wins during the quarter. Operationally, we were focused on strengthening our portfolio internationally, expanding our partner ecosystem, and delivering additional product advancements. With operations in 11 major locations across three continents, our global footprint facilitates close working relationships with local OEMs and access to a truly global talent pool. As Ziyu mentioned, we have gained significant momentum in the China market by adding three additional OEMs to our customer base. We also added six new design wins in the third quarter. Three of these will utilize the ECARX Antora 1000 Pro platform, two will utilize the ECARX Makalu platform, with the remaining to adopt ECARX Antora 1000 platform.

These achievements underscore the increasing demand for software-defined vehicles and enriched in-car experiences, reflecting the significant value proposition and market opportunity for our innovative product portfolio. Our ECARX Antora series offers customers with a high-end digital intelligent cockpit experience at an attractive price point. ECARX's well-integrated Antora SoC also enables them to save on engineering cost and decrease the time needed to bring their vehicles to market. ECARX Makalu, on the other hand, offers clients an ultra high-end performance digital cockpit computing platform, supported by a powerful AMD SoC and Unreal Engine graphic solutions. With unparalleled 3D graphics, security, and entertainment features, it is one of the most powerful intelligent cockpits available on the market.

As Ziyu mentioned, our solutions are now being integrated into Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën Automobile's new Citroën Tianyi, Peugeot 4008 compact SUV, and Peugeot's flagship 508L sedan, which began mass production in the first half of August. These vehicles are equipped with our E02 intelligent cockpit computing module, which has already been installed in more than 1 million vehicles across 32 separate models from a variety of automotive brands. While we continue to grow in China, we also made significant progress with our global expansion during the quarter. The Volvo EX30, which is equipped with ECARX Cloudpeak, began start of production in late September and will be launched globally later this year. We are confident its launch will significantly raise our international profile and provide customers globally a demonstration of the cutting-edge technology and enjoyable in-car experience we can deliver.

To support our expanding international profile, we showcased our ultra-high-end performance digital cockpit capabilities, and more notably, our immersive Makalu platform at IAA Mobility in Munich in September. Our on-site demo allowed visitors to fully experience these innovative solutions and get a taste for the technologies that will shape the vehicle industry for years to come. In November, we will be presenting at the Reuters Automotive USA 2023 industry gathering in Detroit, where we will also meet with many North American prospects. On the technology front, we expanded our product portfolio to include the ECARX Skyland ADAS platforms. ECARX Skyland Pro is our first-generation autonomous driving control unit, which integrates automated parking and active safe driving solutions, such as lane change assist on controlled access highways.

These ADAS capabilities will allow us to further expand content per vehicle and strengthen customer loyalty by providing a more secure and supportive driving experience. The Lynk & Co 08 is the first vehicle to launch, which contains our full-stack solution. It reflects our ability to drive technological innovation, and it is representative of the direction that we are headed in. Its digital cockpit is powered by the Antora 1000 Pro platform, integrated with the ECARX Cloudpeak software stack, and Flyme Auto to deliver a smooth and seamless interactive in-car experience. Together with ECARX Skyland Pro ADAS platform and 5R10V sensor configuration, these technologies bring L2+ capability to this flagship car. The Lynk & Co 08 recently received a high score in preliminary ADAS tests under China's New Car Safety Assessment Program, the NCAP.

With such stellar results, we are confident we can leverage the full-stack solution for the Lynk & Co 08 to approach new customers. We continue to carefully invest in the development of new cutting-edge technologies and have a strong development pipeline that we eagerly look forward to updating you on in the months ahead. Let me now share with you some updates on our partnership ecosystem, which is helping us develop disruptive technologies that will sustainably drive growth and innovation across the automotive sector. In August, we began collaborating with Mobileye to build a one-box solution, integrating automotive driving and parking features that will enable hands-off and eyes-off self-driving on controlled access highways. This solution will be used in the mass production of the Polestar 4 electric SUV coupé, the world's first mass-produced car to adopt Mobileye Chauffeur consumer AV technology.

As part of this collaboration, ECARX will be responsible for the development of parking-related algorithms and functions, local production of hardware used in domain control units, and quality management and supply chain management. This represents significant progress in terms of both innovation and our go-to-market strategies. Going forward, ECARX and Mobileye will partner on a driver-assisted solution and a cockpit driving parking integrated solution based on the latest EyeQ6 automotive-grade SoC. We also expanded our partnership with Baidu Apollo during the quarter, which will see us become one of the first automotive technology partners to explore the intelligent cockpit application of its AI large language model. Through this partnership, multiple innovative functions have been integrated into ECARX computing platforms, some of which are expected to be launched on select mass-produced Lynk & Co models in the near future.

This partnership will leverage each party's respective strengths and will usher in a new era of innovative automotive intelligence solutions that will shape the industry at large. We expect these solutions to enable ECARX to help OEMs provide more natural and differentiated speech recognition, offer unique smart experiences, and propel further innovation in automotive intelligence. To further enhance our technological leadership, we will also incorporate LLM capabilities into our integrated intelligent ecosystem. Our strategic partnership with Xingji Meizu is also very important. The Flyme Auto ecosystem's foundational concept is the integration of smartphone computing and storage capabilities into vehicles to create seamless interconnection.

With unique features such as small window display mode, dynamic effects, and sophisticated in-car climate control, Flyme Auto became the first operating system in the automotive industry to receive certification from China's TL Certification Institute for its superior performance, providing customers with a unique and smooth interactive in-car experience. Finally, an update on ECARX Cloudpeak, our cross-domain system developed in collaboration with our joint venture with Volvo. ECARX Cloudpeak was built to meet strict vehicle safety and information security requirements. It supports multiple operating systems and global mobility ecosystems, with security protocols that meet both Chinese and international standards. In late August, ECARX Cloudpeak was awarded the EAL4 certification for information security.

In closing, as the automotive industry progresses towards software-defined vehicles, and thus from distributed EE architectures to central computing platforms, our innovative solutions and strategic partnerships with some of the world's leading tech companies and OEMs will enable us to build and solidify our market leadership and position ourselves at the forefront of this global transition. Now I will turn the call over to Phil to review our financial results for the past quarter.

Phil Zhou (CFO)

Thank you, Peter, and good day to everyone. We delivered another solid quarter of growth, which further strengthened our position as a key player in the automotive technology sector. Total revenue for the quarter was RMB 1.08 billion, a significant increase of 50% year-over-year. Computing hardware goods revenue was RMB 734 million, up by 38% year-over-year, driven by an increase in demand for our new digital cockpit solution. We increased penetration into Geely ecosystem brand, Smart and Lotus, while our share of wallet in Geely Auto business remained stable. We have shipped our product and solution offering to the new EV market segment and captured the market growth curve. Software license revenue came in at RMB 137 million, an increase of 73% year-over-year, and 21% sequentially, primarily due to demand through our two framework agreements with strategic partners, Pateo and Xingji Meizu.

The related demand was high for ECARX Antora platform software and ECARX Automotive Services IP licenses, which reflects the unique value proposition offered by our cutting-edge solutions. Sales revenue maintained a strong growth momentum as well, with a surge of 92% year-over-year to RMB 209 million. This remarkable increase was primarily due to revenue recognition timing for non-recurring engineering revenue. As we discussed on our last earnings call, we expected the bulk of this revenue to be booked in the second half of 2023. Gross profit reached RMB 331 million, an increase of 140% year-over-year. This was well above the nearly 29% year-over-year increase in cost of revenue due to timing differences in completing non-recurring engineering contracts, which we plan and manage from a full fiscal year perspective.

We expect this as part of the recovery of low year-over-year growth, profit growth delivered last quarter. Looking at quarter four, which is the peak season for the industry, we see challenges in maintaining the same level of gross margin, considering the fierce competition to drive demand and the top-line growth. As well, there may be further pressure on our hardware product margin performance in the coming quarters due to industry-wide price cuts and evolving customer EE architectures. We will focus on driving software and service revenue growth and improving operating efficiency to mitigate the margin impact. Operating expense increased 22% sequentially and 56% year-over-year for two main reasons. First, R&D increased 27% sequentially and 71% year-over-year as we invested to keep pace with advancements made in technology.

Second, our global expansion into Europe and the United States, where we are tapping into growing demand as OEMs transition towards new EVs, and we are accessing a truly global talent pool. Adjusted EBITDA loss was RMB 179 million, an improvement from the loss of RMB 181 million last year. This is a slight improvement, but we need to be aware that such result has already included our accelerated R&D investment in ADAS solutions and the JICA, the JV with the Geely group. If we take out the loss from JV, the profit could be improved by around RMB 15 million in quarter three. However, we firmly believe the investment in ADAS solutions is worthwhile, and it will empower our long-term growth. The performance of the ADAS product on Lynk & Co 08 is quite impressive, as an example.

The loss per share also improved year-over-year from RMB 1.48 to RMB 0.79. This is mainly attributed to the revenue growth in computing platform products, gross margin improvement, and operating cost control. Cost control did not impair our investments in advanced technology development and the global expansion. Moving on to our balance sheet. At quarter end, we had RMB 688 million of cash and restricted cash. With a solid foundation for growth now in place, we expect to allocate additional capital to accelerating our growth trajectory. Maintaining a solid balance sheet is of paramount importance, so we will focus on improving operating efficiency across our supply chain, inventory, and cash flow. Looking forward, we will maintain our operational focus on optimizing efficiency and cost management while carefully allocating resources towards opportunities that can enhance future growth prospects and drive innovation.

Sustainable and fiscally responsible business practices are the backbone of our long-term financial health. With that, I will turn the call back to Ziyu for some concluding remarks, then we will start the Q&A session. Ziyu?

Ziyu Shen (Chairman and CEO)

We are excited about our position in a significant and flourishing market, where industry trends are driving robust tech growth. We are pleased to witness that our customer base has further extended beyond Geely Group. Our unique technology and diverse product offerings have enabled new design wins and fostered the strategic ecosystem partnerships. We are committed to continued progress in these areas. Meanwhile, we are prudently allocating resources towards opportunities that can enhance future growth perspectives and drive innovation, much like our ongoing efforts to stress our international business and presence. Operator, we will now open the floor for questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question on the phone, please press star one one and wait for your name to be announced. To cancel your request, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we open the first question. First question comes from the line of Mai Liu from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Mai Liu (China Auto and Electric Vehicle Equity Analyst)

Yeah, this is Mai from HSBC. Thank you, management, for taking my question, and congratulations on the strong third quarter results. I have two questions. The first is regarding the gross margin. We saw a company has maintained a pretty good, stable gross margin quarter over quarter, despite the very challenging pricing environment. And how do we perceive the gross margin outlook going forward? And will the pricing pressure in other clients escalate to us? And could you give us some colors on the pricing mechanics with our customers? And my second question is regarding the sector. How do you perceive the inflection point of the non-striving functions in both the China and the world? Especially, we are saying the EV pure players like XPENG, Li Auto, Zeekr, are rolling out their non-striving functions.

How do we see the inflection point for non-striving China and also in the world, in the next coming, two to three years, maybe? Yeah, that's my question. Thank you.

Phil Zhou (CFO)

Thank you. This is Phil. I'm going to take the first question regarding the margin performance. Yes, in quarter three, we delivered another strong quarter, and we are on track to deliver profitability expectation based on the current momentum. Looking forward, quarter four is a traditional peak season in the automotive industry, and all OEMs will work on the shipment maximization. There could be a trade-off on pricing, volume, velocity, and we anticipate that the margin erosion will transfer throughout the entire industry chain. But we are ready to catch up the trend and finish the full year under our realm in a strong way. So the profit momentum we built in the first three quarters can help us look at the layer.

So, we have confidence to deliver our original gross margin goal. And, the confidence actually was built on our execution on profit performance, you know, in the first couple of quarters, and we will continue to do that. Number one, initiative is about the software and the service portfolio optimization. The second one, we will continue to drive the cost optimization. The third one, we will drive a product cross-selling to enhance the vehicle cost efficiency, right? So having said that, you know, the new EV markets is now having a fierce price competition on the market sharing between OEMs. And the lease pricing pressures are expected to transfer, right, to Tier 1 vendors can affect the entire market, as I mentioned.

All customers are also working on the EE architecture transformation so as to enhance the digital cockpit capability as well as the cost optimization. So, we do foresee the hardware profit will erode, but will be offset by the initiatives I just mentioned above. We will also proactively participate in the EE architecture transformation discussion. We are sure that our technology platform will be fulfilling the customer demand, and then the transition time window is coming soon, by end of 2024. So with that, we are able to, you know, mitigate the margin erosion on hardware solution, at the same time, drive our software and service further growth.

So we are pretty comfortable with our ability to compete in that environment with our full stack solution that we are already offered on Lynk & Co 08, and we expect more to come.

Peter Cirino (COO)

And then maybe I'll take the second question, Phil. Thanks for that answer. I mean, when we look at the autonomous market, you know, it's certainly still in its initial stages, but quite a dynamic and, I think, exciting market for ECARX to participate in. As we talked about earlier in the presentation, the Lynk & Co 08 is in the market containing our full stack solution, which includes the digital cockpit as well as our Skyland Pro autonomous system. That's our first significant autonomous launch in the market, that ADAS Level 2+ system, you know, eventually will, through OTA features, include navigate on autopilot, and we see that solution being very competitive, both feature set and cost competitive product out in the autonomous market.

When we, you know, scan both the China markets and the global markets relative to autonomous, certainly there's a number of OEMs that are leading in China. I think the deployment of systems there will certainly be much more aggressive. You know, we believe that they'll be mostly focused on the Level 2+ space, and that's where the volume in that autonomous market will be. But certainly there will be some offerings to go beyond that. You know, we're excited about our collaboration with Mobileye. That'll enable us to launch, you know, be one of the first to launch the Chauffeur system on the Polestar 4.

We recently made a detailed announcement about that partnership as well, and we're collaborating very close with Mobileye to offer some unique customizations with this EyeQ6 and Chauffeur solution that we'll be bringing into the Polestar 4 as well as other vehicles. You know, when we look across the European markets and North American markets, we're certainly engaged with a number of OEMs to have discussions about the products that I talked about. I think the adoption rate could be a little slower in some of those markets. We certainly also see that Level 2+ will be the largest volume for some years to come.

But there's certainly many investments going on in the autonomous market, and we're, you know, excited with the opportunity to participate with the products that we're bringing to the vehicles, you know, first in China, but I believe strongly that we'll have opportunities to bring those products to the rest of the world as well.

Operator (participant)

Further questions? One moment for the next questions.

Phil Zhou (CFO)

Yeah.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Lou Jia from BOCI. Please go ahead.

Jia Lou (Senior Analyst)

Thank you, management, for taking my questions, and congratulations on the results for the quarter. I have two questions. The first one is related to Antora 1000 Pro. We see that Lynk & Co 08 has been delivered for some time. Have we received any feedback about the use of Antora 1000 Pro? Could you share any other models which will be equipped with Antora 1000 Pro in 2024? The second question is, considering that we may have more than 13 new products next year, could you share about our budget in R&D for 2024? Do we still maintain the break-even points by the end of next year? Thank you.

Peter Cirino (COO)

Thank you, Lou Jia. Maybe I'll take the first part of that question concerning the Antora Pro digital cockpit. You know, as we've launched the Lynk & Co 08, it's a first opportunity for ECARX to put our full stack solution onto a vehicle. So important for the organization because it represents, you know, the ability to launch the product from, you know, well, what I'll say, from silicon to cloud services. So it's our Antora Pro digital cockpit computing platform on that vehicle. The software stack is, you know, our full software stack, Cloudpeak software stack in that car, as well as the Flyme Auto integration with the cellphone, with the Meizu cellphone that is also launched on that vehicle.

You know, we've seen very strong demand for that vehicle, and, you know, we anticipate that the demand in the market will continue to grow for that car. So we're excited about continuing to service that vehicle and, you know, launch additional features in future OTAs, both in the digital cockpit and in the Skyland autonomous system that's launched on that vehicle. When we look at future launches, we have additional launches that are planned for next year with all three of our significant products. So the Antora series, the Antora Pro series, as well as our Makalu series, will have a large number of launches as we move through 2024 on a number of different platforms.

I think that will contribute to, you know, a significant volume growth we see for the organization on a go-forward basis.

Phil Zhou (CFO)

Yeah. I will take the second question regarding the R&D investment. Looking at our current trajectory for quarter two and quarter three, R&D expense as a percentage of revenue will be stable around 30%. So we will keep investing into the other ones, the technology development and the product availability for market. Well, there's a potential to adjust R&D investment percentage as the scaling of the revenue growth occurs, right? We will keep it at a reasonable level, 30%, as our general guideline. We also expect the significant growth and the possibility of continuing to fix the cost.

So the original guidance on breakeven was based on the company's position at the starting of the this year, and the goal is still there. But breakeven could be further pushed out to 2025, given the investment that we're making in a brand-new product portfolio, as Peter just mentioned. We have you know a TV merged starting in Q2, and we also invest a bit into the AD, autonomous driving solution. So nevertheless, we are still working on that goal. And as long as we invest in additional product lines, the whole group profitability will be different. But we will make sure the return of investment and you know keep pushing our breakeven as our entire group's goal.

Jia Lou (Senior Analyst)

Okay, thank you. It's very helpful.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Next question comes from the line of Derek Soderberg from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Derek Soderberg (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, hey, thanks for taking my questions. I want to start with the pricing environment. I'm curious how sort of ASPs are moving, and then, you know, as it relates to inflation, do you guys have, you know, maybe inflation clauses embedded in your pricing contracts? And how quickly are those contracts negotiated every year? Thanks.

Phil Zhou (CFO)

Thank you. I'm going to address this question. So, yes, the pricing competition is observed for the industry, at least during the first three quarters. And as I mentioned, the pricing undercut will be transferred to the entire industry. However, at ECARX, right now we are offering the full stack solutions, right, including the computing platform, software operating system, and you know, the ADAS solutions. And on top of that, we are also driving cost optimization, so including the costs you just mentioned. So, for the contracts we sign with our customers and vendors, we also define the flexibility in terms of the product exchange, okay? And at the same time, right, we also you know provide our high value-added services to the customers.

With that, we are able to, you know, maintain and keep increasing the ASP, at the same time, without pricing away our, you know, cost optimization activities.

Derek Soderberg (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Got it. And then as my follow-up, I'm curious if you could talk a bit about there's a strike in the United States with the auto workers. I'm curious if there's any sort of knockout effects that you're seeing on your end. And then just, you know, on the macro environment, are you seeing any particular areas of strength or weakness that have kind of changed in the past quarter or two? Thanks.

Peter Cirino (COO)

Derek, maybe I'll capture that question. I mean, you know, we talked about a number of exciting launches for ECARX, and I think that's what's driving our volume both in the current quarter and as we look at our outlook into next year. You know, the launches certainly with a number of electric vehicles are seeing very strong adoption in the market. So we mentioned the Volvo EX30. We have launches coming with the Polestar brand and with our other, with the Lynk & Co brand, and also a lot of activities beyond our core customers, like we've described earlier today with the launch of products with the Peugeot-Citroën and Dongfeng brands that we see launching this quarter.

So I think we have a very strong pipeline. You know, when we look at the impact from the U.S. strike, it doesn't really affect our business at this point in time. But we certainly see very strong demand for our products, both in, as we go through here, Q4, and as we move into 2024.

Derek Soderberg (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks.

Peter Cirino (COO)

Mm-hmm.

Operator (participant)

The questions. Our next question comes from the line of Shujin Chen from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hi, this is Jane from Jefferies. Thank you so much for taking my question, and congratulations on the strong financial performance. I have two questions for management. My first question is about the product pipeline. Can you share more colors about the new product mass production timeline and guidance of the delivery targets of each product line? And I'm also wondering which customer or car model or platform do you think can be the strongest growth driver next year? And the second question is regarding the competition from Huawei, especially in terms of the smart cockpit solution. You know, Huawei is expanding its cooperation with multiple car makers and will launch more new models. And AITO M7 and M9 has gained much interest and recognitions from customers.

How do you think of the competition from Huawei, since we are also developing the Flyme Auto operating system with Xingji Meizu? These are my questions. Thank you.

Peter Cirino (COO)

Yeah, thank you for your question. Let me go ahead and address both elements. We have a large number of new launches as we go into 2024. So we see launches across all of our products, both in the digital cockpit space with, as I mentioned earlier, with Antora and Antora Pro. Those vehicles, you know, vehicles deploying those systems launch throughout 2024 on a number of different brands. We mentioned some today, especially with the Volvo EX30, is a significant launch for us as it enabled us to deliver vehicles globally, throughout, I believe it's more than 40 countries on that vehicle. Also, we mentioned the Lynk & Co 08 with our full stack solution, is a key benchmark product for ECARX and very well received in the marketplace as well.

As we go through 2024, we expect launches, you know, with, with our digital cockpit products, as well as additional launches on the Skyland ADAS system. So we'll continue to see the steady progress that we've made in 2023 and extend that into 2024. As Phil mentioned, we're continuing to invest in our pipeline with future product developments, both in the ADAS space as well as the digital cockpit space. You know, recently we announced the Mobileye collaboration that will bring a new, new and unique product offering to our portfolio with a future launch on a Polestar 4 coupé. As well as we'll likely be making additional announcements as we go through the next one to two quarters on investments in our digital cockpit platform as well. Then your second question was relative to Huawei.

I would say we're really excited to see Huawei enter the market. I mean, they're a very strong competitor that brings a great technology stack. But we're also, you know, quite excited about the offering that ECARX can bring, both with our computing platform, our software stack, and the Flyme Auto collaboration that we have with Meizu. So, you know, ECARX has a very unique position in the market because we truly offer a fully vertical technology stack. So we go as I said earlier in the call, we go from silicon right through the cloud services. And I think we bring a very competitive product offering to that space. You know, Huawei is a great company, and it's great to see them invest in the automotive marketplace.

I think it demonstrates the potential for this, for the continued expansion of this product in the market, and you know, how customers, how end customers are differentiating their purchases in vehicles. I think if you look at, you know, our product offering, it's very capable as well, provides a very unique user experience, especially with the Flyme Auto stack and the full cell phone integration that we can do with the Meizu cell phones. You know, I think we're very comfortable with our ability to compete on a go-forward basis and excited to see, you know, additional new technology partners come into this space and really demonstrate how significant the demand will be in the future.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for the questions. Next question comes from the line of Jiaqi Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead.

Jiaqi Zhang (Analyst)

Congratulations on the results for this quarter. My name is Jiaqi, and I'm from CICC. Thank you for taking my questions. I've seen some great progress in the software provided by ECARX in this quarter's presentation. I would like to ask three questions regarding the software products. The first one is regarding the Cloudpeak, which is launched in the Volvo EX30. I think it is probably, launches on a hardware platform that is not produced by ECARX. Could you give us some hints, how is the projects collaborated with the other party? And what is the business model, and what is the gross margin be like in this project? That's my first question. The second question is regarding the Flyme Auto system.

It has been launched on Lynk 08, but we have noticed that it is not launched in Lynk 06. So could you give us some guidance on what kind of projects will use Flyme Auto, which ones will not? And could you also refresh us, what is the Flyme Auto business model like, and what are the or if there are going to be more projects going to launch Flyme Auto? So that's my second question. My last question is regarding the autonomous driving functions on the Skyland Pro. So who is actually responsible for developing these functions, and how is the business model going to be like? Yeah, thank you so much.

Peter Cirino (COO)

Yeah, thank you for your questions. So let me, let me try to address them one by one. So as we look at the, you know, the Cloudpeak solution that we've launched on, the EX30, you know, this is a demonstration of ECARX's capability to deliver products on a global scale. So we've have a significant number of engineers that are actively working on the team to mature that product. You know, it's a product that we developed jointly with our joint venture with Volvo Cars, and one that will, that will feature the Google Automotive Services. In that environment, as we mentioned earlier, you know, it is launched on a, a Qualcomm SoC as well as, with through tight collaboration, through a great partner that we have with Visteon on the supply chain side.

But, you know, I would say ECARX is playing a position of a system integrator and software developer. We've also contributed significantly to the hardware design in that environment. You know, we're as we have already announced in our series, we bring, you know, supply chain capabilities to our portfolio. So we operate in a number of different business models to deliver those solutions to the marketplace. But we play a, you know, a very strong position in terms of development of the software, you know, delivering the UI/UX that has been detailed by Volvo Cars, and also integrating all of the solutions from Google Automotive into the software capabilities of that vehicle.

You know, relative to the Flyme Auto position, you know, it's the Lynk & Co 08 is really a great product. And when you couple that with the cell phone integration and the unique user experience that we bring through our full vertical technology stack, I think it really is a differentiating product in the marketplace. There are many new launches coming with the Flyme Auto solution in the software stack. And, you know, in that construct, we have a unique relationship with Meizu that we work very tightly with them on the integration of that capability into the vehicle.

There are a large number of launches inside our pipeline, and we're working to deploy that on more vehicles as we go through 2024 and 2025. I think it provides an extremely solid user experience and, you know, differentiating user experience with a full integration of the cell phone in the vehicle. We really see, you know, that's one of the core founding principles in ECARX that both Ziyu and Eric saw as they established our business, is this, not only this, you know, importance of both software and compute power to the automotive experience on a go-forward basis, but the integration of, let's say, one digital life inside the vehicle, where, you know, your cell phone and the car become one user experience.

And through the collaboration with the XINGJI MEIZU GROUP, we bring that to life in the Lynk & Co 08, plus in a number of launches that we'll see throughout 2024 and go forward. And then lastly, you mentioned autonomous. On the Skyland Pro system, you know, there's it, it's a significant activity from JICA and from ECARX to develop the, you know, the driving algorithms for that vehicle, driving and parking algorithms for that vehicle. And a significant portion of that development was done in-house. You know, we often engage a number of partners, and I think we've announced that Black Sesame was a key partner for us in the deployment of that system.

And, you know, some of the solutions and software stack, primarily with perception software, was done by Black Sesame, but much of the driving decision software, sensor fusion software and so on, ECARX brought and JICA brought to that vehicle. And, you know, as I look across our feature deployment, relative to the OTAs that will come to that vehicle, we will continue to deploy new features in that ADAS system, as we move through this quarter and next quarter. And we believe quite strongly it'll be a competitive solution, both in the China market and potentially even in the global market. I mean, we mentioned very high rating on the C-NCAP score, and, you know, we're continuing to qualify that also in other safety scores.

It was built from, you know, a very strong foundation in terms of AUTOSAR and QNX at the base level of that software to make sure it's really can be a globally competitive solution in the future.

Jiaqi Zhang (Analyst)

Right. Thank you for answering.

Peter Cirino (COO)

Yeah, thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for the questions. Once again, to ask question, please press star one one and wait for your name to be announced. At this time, there are no further questions from the line. Allow me to hand the call back to management for closing.

Phil Zhou (CFO)

All right. Thank you all for participating in today's earnings call. So ECARX, we are excited about our position in this significant and flourishing market, where the industry trends are driving robust sector growth. The ECARX also keep a strong momentum in business growth and the profitability enhancement, and we will further devote our heart and soul into that, and looking forward to talking with you very soon in coming quarter four and the annual report cycle. Thank you again.

Operator (participant)

That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.