Red Star Capital Bureau reported on October 31st that Ideal Automobile (02015. HK/LI. US) announced its third quarter 2024 financial report today. The company delivered 152800 new cars in the third quarter, a year-on-year increase of 45.4%; Revenue reached 42.874 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.6%; The net profit reached 2.82 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.3%, and it has been profitable for eight consecutive quarters.
Ideal Auto stated that thanks to the hot sales of Ideal L6 and the continuous increase in the sales proportion of AD Max models priced over 300000 yuan, the company's delivery volume and quarterly revenue in the third quarter both reached a historic high. In the new energy vehicle market of over 200000 yuan, the market share of Ideal Automobile increased from 14.4% in the second quarter to 17.3% in the third quarter.
In terms of core gross profit margin, the vehicle gross profit margin of Ideal Automobile in the third quarter was 20.9%, compared to 21.2% in the same period last year, and 18.7% in the second quarter of this year; The overall gross profit margin was 21.5%, compared to 22% in the same period last year, and 19.5% in the second quarter of this year. The increase in gross profit margin of vehicles on a month on month basis is mainly due to cost reduction, but partially offset by a decrease in average selling price mainly caused by different product combinations.
The R&D expenses of Ideal Automobile in the third quarter were 2.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 8.2% and a month on month decrease of 14.6%, mainly due to the reduction of design and R&D costs for new products and technologies, as well as a decrease in employee salaries. In the first three quarters of 2024, the R&D expenses of Ideal Automobile totaled 8.66 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.1%. The new intelligent driving solution combining end-to-end (E2E) and visual language model (VLM) from Ideal Automotive has been fully pushed to over 320000 AD Max owners in October.
The operating expenses of Ideal Automobile in the third quarter were 5.8 billion yuan, an increase of 9.2% year-on-year and 1.5% month on month; Sales, general and administrative expenses amounted to 3.4 billion yuan, an increase of 32.1% year-on-year and 19.3% month on month. This was mainly due to the recognition of share based compensation expenses for the CEO based on performance, as the company believed that the relevant performance targets were likely to be achieved, and the increase in employee compensation resulting from the increase in the number of employees.
Ideal Auto's operating cash flow for the third quarter was 11 billion yuan, with a free cash flow of 9.1 billion yuan. As of September 30, 2024, Ideal Automobile's cash reserves reached 106.5 billion yuan.
Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Ideal Auto is expected to deliver 160000 to 170000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 21.4% to 29.0%; Revenue reached 43.2 billion to 45.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.5% to 10.0%.