Prepared remarks
Good morning, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to WeRide's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that today's event is being recorded. Operator Instructions: Please note that the Chinese interpretation is for convenience purposes only. In the case of any discrepancy, management statements in their original language will prevail. Joining us today, WeRide's Founder, Chairman and CEO; Dr. Tony Han; and CFO and Head of International, Ms. Jennifer Li. Before we continue, I would like to refer you to the safe harbor statement in the company's earnings press release, which also applies to this call as today's call will include forward-looking statements including WeRide's strategy and future plans. These forward-looking statements are made under the safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Securities Legislation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, and please refer to the Risk Factors section of the company's Form 20-F filed with the SEC and announcement on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for a full disclosure of these risk factors. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Please note that all numbers stated in the management's prepared remarks are in RMB terms and we will discuss non-IFRS measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported in the company's earnings release and filings with the SEC and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company's unaudited financial and operating results were released earlier today via Newswire and can be found on the company's IR website. With that, I will now begin the company's video presentation. Now I would like to pass the floor to the company's Founder, Chairman and CEO, Dr. Tony Han. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We started 2026 with strong momentum as a global leader in autonomous driving. In the first quarter, the total revenue of WeRide reached RMB 114 million, 58% up year-over-year. These results are driven by our accelerating global taxi deployment, growth across our broader autonomous driving business and the great success of our L2++ level ADAS solution. By the end of April, our global robotaxi fleet grew to around 1,300 vehicles, representing one of the largest robotaxi fleets globally. At the same time, our Level 4 autonomous driving fleet, including robovan and the robobus, has grown to around 2,800 units. They have been deployed to or tested in 12 countries and over 40 cities worldwide. We believe the steady and significant progress this quarter reflects not only the maturity of our technology, but also the growing operational experience for L4-level fleet in multiple cities. First of all, I want to point out that we have made a major technical breakthrough through GENESIS, our closed-loop world model-based simulation engine, which boosted our model evolution pace by several folds. We can now train AI models for autonomous driving with synthesized corner cases, which may be very rare or even imaginary. With a compact AI model leveraged on our GENESIS, we have achieved four consecutive championships in the China Urban Intelligent Driving Competition. This is unprecedented. The best previous record is held by Huawei ADAS system, which got two consecutive championships. Today, many companies talk about world models and simulation platforms. But WeRide is one of very few companies that have publicly demonstrated footage of a highly realistic autonomous driving world model at scale. We have already released the GENESIS demonstration video on YouTube where viewers can check the model's ability to reconstruct and simulate visually realistic driving environments, strictly following physical laws as well. GENESIS can generate holistic virtual driving environments consistent to the desired locations, including traffic laws, pedestrians, weather conditions and complex interactions between vehicles and surrounding objects. More importantly, we can add environment components to simulate highly challenging scenarios such as aggressive driving behavior, heavy traffic, extreme weather, poor road conditions and many other long-tail corner cases that are very difficult and extremely expensive to replicate in the real world. By leveraging synthetic data and large-scale simulation, GENESIS improved training and validation efficiency by thousands of times compared to traditional road testing. It also significantly reduces the crucial dependence on large-scale testing fleets and accelerates the deployment process in new operational regions globally. GENESIS is not just a capability. It is a unified simulation and AI training platform supporting applications from L2 ADAS to L4 robotaxi. And it is the very same technology backbone that makes us the only company in the world to have already achieved the scaled commercialization of both L4 robotaxi and mass-production L2 vehicles. The newly developed GENESIS now has paved the way for WeRide into the physical AI world. With GENESIS, the ADAS system developed by WeRide is comparable to the performance of FSD 14.3 in California. I personally own two Teslas and I drive with FSD 14.3 every day. I look forward to entering our global urban intelligent driving competition directly facing FSD 14.3 from Tesla; I hope one day we can meet in the U.S. or Europe and give our consumers a head-to-head comparison. Today, we are seeing our technology leadership translate into real global commercial scale. Let me walk you through the key operational and commercialization milestones we have achieved this quarter. First, in China, our robotaxi business continued to make strong progress in scale, operational efficiency and commercialization depth. By the end of April, our domestic robotaxi fleet expanded to about 1,000 vehicles, while our service area in Guangzhou increased by 97% compared to the end of 2025, including additional downtown districts. On the demand side, average daily orders per vehicle domestically reached 17 trips during Q1 with peak periods reaching 28 trips per vehicle. Registered robotaxi users also nearly doubled year-over-year. We believe these metrics continue to demonstrate growing user adoption and improving unit economics as robotaxi commercialization scales. In this quarter, we also continued to deepen our partner ecosystem. In April, we expanded our collaboration with Lenovo in autonomous driving computing platforms with a joint target to deploy 200,000 autonomous driving vehicles globally over the next five years. Together with Geely Farizon, we plan to deliver 2,000 upgraded, purpose-built robotaxi GXRs in 2026. We believe this partnership further strengthened our manufacturing scalability and deployment capability globally. Now turning to international markets. We also continue to see strong momentum in both new market launches and commercialization progress. In Singapore, we launched the country's first public autonomous driving service together with Grab. Since the initial deployment plan began in the second half of last year, the fleet has built a trustworthy operational track record in a highly regulated international market. In the Middle East, we have launched fully driverless commercial robotaxi operations in Dubai together with Uber and Dubai's RTA. This is the city's first fully driverless commercial robotaxi service. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi service coverage expanded to around 70% of the city's core area. Across the Middle East, together with Uber, we remain on track to deploy at least 1,200 robotaxi across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh by 2027. In Europe, we entered Slovakia in March, our fourth European market, and continued progressing towards fully driverless commercial operation in Zurich. Overall, we continue to believe WeRide remains the most globally deployed autonomous driving company today with deployments across 12 countries and permits in eight markets. This global footprint not only diversifies our revenue but also demonstrates operational and regulatory capabilities that are hard for followers to replicate. It also keeps us on track towards our long-term vision of deploying tens of thousands of robotaxi globally by 2030. Beyond global taxi, our ADAS business is also seeing growing commercial traction. Our current version of ADAS system WRD 3.0 has been adopted by nearly 30 vehicle models, including vehicles from leading OEMs, such as GAC and Chery. In April, GAC Aion launched presales for the Aion N60, the first mass-production vehicle with WeRide's solution. Leveraging the generalization capability of GENESIS, our WRD 3.0 solution is now supporting three major chip platforms: NVIDIA DRIVE, Qualcomm Snapdragon and SiEngine StarLight. We believe this level of multi-chip compatibility is crucial because it enables faster mass production, greater cost optimization and broader OEM adoption. At the same time, we continue expanding internationally with partners, bringing WeRide-powered ADAS solutions to consumers globally. Finally, for robobus, we also continue making progress globally. We are collaborating with the Geneva public transport operator, TPG, on our autonomous bus deployment. Meanwhile, we are preparing for the robobus operation with our partner, and we've been active for the third consecutive year. To summarize, the first quarter of 2026 was about substantiating technology leadership of WeRide into commercial scalability through growing robotaxi operations, expansion into new international markets, growing deployment pipelines and continued unrivaled winning momentum in ADAS. We believe we are executing well with our global strategy, and we continue to see a clear path toward long-term growth. With that, let me turn the call over to our CFO, Jennifer Li, for a deeper view of the financial results this quarter. Thank you.
Thank you, Tony. Hello, everyone. Before we dive into the financials, I want to highlight that all figures are in RMB, comparisons are year-over-year, unless stated otherwise. And we will discuss non-IFRS measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported in the company's earnings release and filings with the SEC and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Now let's discuss our first quarter financial performance. We delivered total revenue of RMB 114 million in the first quarter, representing an increase of 38%. Product revenue increased 116% to RMB 20 million, mainly driven by increased deployment of robotaxi and other L4 vehicles. Service revenue increased 49% to RMB 94 million. This revenue growth mirrors the solid commercial progress we made in this quarter, together with our proven track record in execution and deployment. Considering the seasonal impact of Chinese New Year and Ramadan in the Middle East, our business performance surpassed our original internal targets. Group-level gross profit increased 56% to RMB 40 million in the first quarter, with the group-level gross margin of approximately 35%. We maintained top-line expansion without sacrificing margin discipline and demonstrated the inherent profitability of our autonomous driving business as we further scale. This was also supported by the increased exposure to ex-China markets where we continue to see structurally stronger margin profiles as we expand into additional international territories. Operating expenses were RMB 459 million with R&D expense accounting for 77% of the total operating expense. Our operating expenses are stable in absolute RMB amount compared to the same period in 2025. To break down further, R&D expense increased by 12% to RMB 353 million in Q1 2026. Excluding share-based compensation, R&D expense grew 16% to RMB 322 million. This consistent investment in R&D underpins our technology roadmap and ensures we stay at the forefront of autonomous driving innovation. Administrative expense decreased by 33% to RMB 83 million in the first quarter. Excluding share-based compensation, administrative expense decreased by 17% to RMB 51 million. The decrease was primarily driven by lower professional services fees, mainly related to audit and legal compliance services, and partially offset by increased personnel costs for the expansion of our team as a growing business. Selling expense increased by 63% to RMB 23 million in Q1 2026. Excluding share-based compensation, selling expense increased by 81% to RMB 22 million. The increase corresponds to ongoing expansion for our business and shows our commitment to support growth appropriately. Our net loss came in at RMB 359 million in the first quarter. On a non-IFRS basis, the net loss increased slightly by 11% to RMB 326 million in the first quarter. The slight uptick was largely driven by ongoing R&D spending as we continue to invest ahead of scale in our long-term technology leadership. As of March 31, 2026, we had total capital reserves of RMB 6.22 billion, comprising RMB 6.18 billion in cash and cash equivalents and time deposits, RMB 29 million in investments and wealth management products and RMB 18 million in restricted cash. We maintained short-term bank loans of RMB 294 million to support daily operations. We have well positioned our capital base to match our cash deployment needs with headroom to support ongoing growth and strategic initiatives. Under the USD 100 million share repurchase program authorized by our Board of Directors on March 23, 2026, we have repurchased approximately 24.4 million Class A ordinary shares, including in the form of American depositary shares, as of market close on May 12 for a total consideration of approximately USD 61.4 million. This reflects our firm belief in the company's long-term value and growth potential. Moving forward, we proceed with confidence and a well-defined focus. By the end of 2026, we remain on track to deploy 2,000 robotaxi worldwide, marking the first milestone in our journey towards hundreds of thousands by 2030. As we continue to scale, our approach is to enter new regions and cities which have proven to be effective and replicable. Supported by strong technological leadership, operational know-how and an increasingly robust global rollout, we're prepared to lead the next phase of autonomous driving. With that, operator, we are now ready to take some questions.
Questions and answers
Operator Instructions: First question comes from Stanley Wan from Morgan Stanley.
This is Stanley from Morgan Stanley. I have two questions. First, on your robotaxi expansion, are you on track to meet your expansion roadmap in 2026? Could you update us on the latest expansion progress in China, the Middle East and the rest of the world? Second, on WeRide's overseas business: with the company's core advantage being its possession of overseas operating licenses in eight countries and in light of the global expansion of players like Waymo and Zoox and also the accelerating regulatory approvals, how do you view the key growth drivers, profitability path and timeline for tangible contributions from your overseas operations in 2026 to 2027?
Okay. I will take the first question, and then I will let Jennifer answer the second question about profitability. So first question is about whether we are on track with our robotaxi expansion. I think overall we are very optimistic and confident in our global robotaxi expansion, and we have been making steady progress. At the end of April, our global robotaxi fleet reached approximately 1,300 vehicles. That is, to my best knowledge, one of the biggest robotaxi fleets globally. In China, our robotaxi fleet has grown to approximately 1,000 vehicles with solid demand, healthy daily order volume and a growing user base. I want to share a number: our average daily order per vehicle exceeded 17 trips during the first quarter. That is an amazing number. Our overseas robotaxi fleet has expanded to approximately 300 vehicles across multiple markets. In the Middle East, we recently launched our full driverless commercial operation in Dubai on the Uber platform. Today, if you want to ride a full driverless robotaxi outside of the U.S. and China, to my best knowledge, the only way is through Uber riding WeRide's robotaxi in Abu Dhabi or Dubai. That's our current stage. Regional tensions have created some short-term softness in utilization, but we remain very confident. More important, we remain firmly committed to the Middle East, and our long-term investment and operational presence are well received by local governments. We remain on track toward our commitments to deploy 1,200 vehicles across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh by 2027 as additional driverless permits are added. In Europe, we are expanding our footprint. In Switzerland, we obtained the region's first driverless commercial permit and continue progressing towards public operations in Zurich. We also recently launched our national autonomous driving program in Slovakia, making our entry into another new European market. More broadly, we believe WeRide has established a meaningful first-mover advantage through years of global expansion, and overall I think this global operation and regulatory footprint is becoming an increasingly important differentiator as autonomous driving commercialization accelerates worldwide. So that's my answer to your question about our global roadmap and plan. About profitability, would you pick up the question, Jennifer?
Yes, I'll answer the second one. Stanley mentioned the advantage of having operating licenses in eight countries. When comparing the total number of robotaxi deployed and driverless permits held by any autonomous driving company outside China and the U.S., WeRide ranks first among the different companies. We are very encouraged by the momentum of our international expansion so far. As referenced in the last earnings release, international revenue already accounts for approximately one-third of total group revenue last year. Our Middle East subsidiary was already profitable at the net level. Tony already talked through our key developments in some regions this year and we will announce more exciting news in global taxi deployment in due course. This year, we expect international revenue to grow even faster and contribute an even larger share of group revenue supported by positive economics. I would also like to elaborate a little on our city selection criteria. People often ask, you already have presence in about 40 cities, so do you want to expand to more cities or focus on the current ones? Our strategy is to focus on scale in existing cities as well as entering additional cities selectively. We really consider whether the market has the potential to support scalable and commercially attractive operations over the long term. Especially on monetization potential, we pay close attention to the overall gross booking opportunities as well as the gross bookings per mile because both scale and unit price matter significantly for long-term global taxi unit economics. Besides, we focus heavily on whether there is a realistic path to scale for all the cities where we are currently deploying. We do see potential for each city to deploy thousands of autonomous driving vehicles. Europe remains to be a key focus for us this year. We will share more deployment news in Europe hopefully soon. That concludes my answer for this question.
Next, we have Ming-Hsun Lee from Bank of America.
I also have two questions. First, how do the recent reports about China holding new self-driving approvals impact WeRide? Second, it's about the technology difference. There has been a consistent industry-wide debate over the LiDAR and HD Map approach that Waymo adopts versus the camera-only solution by Tesla. What is WeRide's view?
I'll take these questions one by one. First, regarding the recent halt on new self-driving approvals: we all noticed the accident involving another provider in Wuhan and the regulatory response. Our view is that this is more of a short-term regulatory adjustment rather than a structural change to the industry. From our discussions with central and local governments, we were assured that support for autonomous driving remains very strong. Regulators are pausing new approvals temporarily while conducting careful investigations, but existing autonomous driving vehicles remain operational. From our perspective, this is natural as autonomous driving moves from early pilots toward larger-scale commercialization; regulators will understandably place a greater focus on safety. We fully support this responsible approach. Ultimately, this is positive for the long-term development of the industry: companies with strong safety and operational records should be rewarded, and those with poor records should be held accountable. For WeRide specifically, we remain confident because we have accumulated meaningful real-world operational experience in China and internationally. We operate and test across more than 40 cities in 12 countries. Overall, we view this regulatory step as necessary and believe it will lead to a more sustainable competitive landscape. Second question, on LiDAR/HD Map versus camera-only: my view is simple — I am results-oriented. For L4 robotaxi operations, safety and robustness are paramount. If HD Maps are helpful, why not use them? We have long adopted a multi-sensor redundancy-oriented technology path. We believe combining camera and LiDAR builds a strong, robust autonomous driving system, an approach broadly aligned with leading players like Waymo. At the same time, we are closely watching vision-only progress, including Tesla's approach. FSD 14.3 has made very good progress, and we admire Tesla's achievements, although it is not yet a driverless robotaxi system. Our ADAS system, based on a one-stage end-to-end world model, has achieved four consecutive championships in China. We are aware of the advantages of camera-only solutions based on foundation models and world models, and we are strong in that area. We have spent significant effort addressing corner cases in complex urban environments like Madrid. Historically, cities like Zurich and Madrid require significant localization and testing, but with GENESIS we can combine HD Map approaches and world model-based approaches. One of WeRide's strengths is flexibility across different architectures. We can integrate LiDAR-based, HD Map-based and vision-based methods. Overall, to have a reliable and safe robotaxi deployment currently, HD Maps remain important; gradually, world-model-centric approaches may handle map changes and ensure map freshness. We plan to cherry-pick the advantages of camera-based world models and LiDAR/HD Map systems into our core system. Given our ADAS programs and L4 deployment experience, we believe WeRide is well positioned to do this effectively.
Next, we have an analyst from Huatai Securities.
I have two questions. First, we are seeing more and more Level 2 players announcing plans to enter Level 4. What's your view on this? Second, can you give more details on multi-chip platform compatibility for Level 2? How do you achieve chipset portability versus optimization?
Thank you for the questions. On the first question about ADAS companies moving to L4: I want to emphasize there is still a significant gap between advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and true L4 robotaxi driverless systems. To be credible as an L4 company, in our view you should have a public, driverless fleet of at least 100 vehicles operating for more than half a year without significant accidents. For an ADAS company, you must deploy systems into mass-production cars. Three or four years ago, WeRide had ADAS prototypes in the lab but could not be called an ADAS company; today we have deployed WRD 3.0 across nearly 30 vehicle models and to mass-production volumes. The core challenge to go from ADAS to L4 is robustness, operational capability and scalability. For example, typical metrics like miles per critical intervention (MPCI) differ by orders of magnitude: many ADAS systems target MPCI at the 1,000-kilometer level, whereas L4 operations from WeRide and Waymo are above the one-million-kilometer level — a three-order-of-magnitude gap. Improving MPCI by 10x per year is an extremely difficult task. It takes years of real-world operations to uncover the corner cases and achieve the reliability needed for L4. I have a practical rule: operate a driverless fleet of at least 100 cars in public for half a year to assess the real challenges. On the second question about multi-chip platform compatibility: the key is our GENESIS model. GENESIS enables us to create AI models that can be trimmed and optimized for different chipsets of varying complexity. So far, we have rolled out systems based on NVIDIA platforms, and WRD 3.0 has been implemented on Qualcomm platforms such as Snapdragon 865 and we are expanding to other chip vendors like SiEngine. With GENESIS, we can produce a spectrum of onboard AI models that accommodate different compute requirements, which gives us a competitive advantage. To my knowledge, few other companies can support such a wide range of chipsets simultaneously for both ADAS and global taxi solutions.
Next, we have Kai Xiao from CICC.
I have a question on the multi-chip platform strategy you mentioned. Can you share why this strategy is important for your L2++ ADAS business?
The main reason is that different OEMs have different hardware preferences. Some OEMs want extremely cost-effective chips, others want high-performance computational platforms, and they have different supply chain requirements. A flexible multi-chip architecture allows us to support a broad range of vehicle platforms without redesigning the system every time. GENESIS helps by enabling a spectrum of onboard AI models that accommodate different compute requirements. Multi-chip vendor flexibility enables faster mass production and better cost optimization. Different chip platforms offer different costs and supply chain advantages. If an ADAS company can deliver across a spectrum of chipsets, OEMs are more likely to work closely with you. This flexibility helps secure more production across more vehicle types. Also, Chinese vehicle exports to the rest of the world are growing and many of those exported models do not have strong ADAS. We have already secured numerous vehicle models for ADAS supply internationally. So next year you may see overseas models equipped with WeRide ADAS in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and even Europe. Please stay tuned.
Next, we have Xinyu Fang from UBS.
I have one question about the strategic balance and prioritization between China and international business. As Tony mentioned, there has been news about tightening scrutiny for autonomous driving permits domestically and WeRide has been making steady advancement in international markets with better unit economics. Could management please share your thoughts on the balance and priority of domestic and overseas operations lately?
Xinyu, I'll take your question. We see both China and international markets as strategically important. In the near-to-medium term, certain international markets offer a clearer and faster path to commercially attractive robotaxi economics thanks to favorable pricing, partnerships and regulation. Demonstrating sustainable profitability early on is critical for the industry, as healthy cash flow enables self-sustained growth. We started building a significant international model in 2021, ahead of most peers, and since then we've gained hard-to-replicate expertise in global deployment, regulation, localization and fleet operations. Meanwhile, China remains a key long-term market due to its ecosystem, infrastructure and because it is our home, and we continue to maintain a strong focus here. Overall, we see a powerful flywheel effect: scaling across more cities and countries provides more data and validation, which improves performance and regulatory trust and accelerates permitting and commercialization. We expect international revenue to grow rapidly this year and we are on track to achieve our full-year revenue target.
Next, we have Tianyu Lu from Citic Securities.
I have two questions. First, what's Uber's overall shareholding and how should investors think about the relationship between WeRide and Uber? Second, could you share your go-to-market model across different markets?
Overall, Uber holds more than 5% of WeRide based on their latest public filing. Uber is a strategic shareholder and a key partner for WeRide, and we view their investment as a strong endorsement of our technology and commercialization strategy. Operationally, we're already deploying with Uber in more cities outside the U.S. than many other AV players, which reflects both the depth of our relationship and our ability to execute at scale. We expect to enter more cities with Uber this year. Our go-to-market approach is diversified and we work with partners that best fit each market. In China, we offer our own app to build brand awareness and operational capability; you can ride our robotaxi via WeRide Go, Amap and Tencent mini-programs. In Southeast Asia, we partnered with Grab. In Europe, we collaborate with local platforms, operators and public transport organizations including SBB in Zurich, TPG in Geneva and partners in Slovakia. This flexible approach accelerates deployment and permitting. Regarding the asset-light business model: outside China, we implemented asset-light models in all markets. In some cases, robotaxis are purchased by mobility platforms or local customers; in others, they are owned by third-party fleet owners. We have executed both models successfully. The asset-light model allows WeRide to focus on providing technology and operations while leveraging local capital to scale more efficiently. In China, our priority is to continue improving unit economics and operational efficiency so that the revenue share becomes appealing to third-party owners. Over time, China should move in the same direction as utilization strengthens and the model naturally transitions toward more asset-light structures.
Our last question comes from May Lou from HSBC.
I have one question. What's the trajectory for robotaxi vehicle cost reduction?
Cost reduction is a key focus and we continue to see meaningful progress driven by three main factors. First, hardware and system integration: with our latest platform and our purpose-built vehicle GXR, we are moving toward pre-integrated and standardized solutions, which reduces BOM costs year over year. Second, scale and supply chain optimization: as we move to a few thousand unit deployments, we achieve better cost efficiency across components and manufacturing. Third, operational efficiency: we already see strong efficiency improvements as fleet scales and utilization increases. For example, in the last quarter our remote safety officer ratio improved to 1:40 from previously around 1:10–1:20. Internationally, we are following the same trend, though not yet at 1:40 in all markets. Improved remote operational efficiency meaningfully reduces per-vehicle TCO and improves unit economics. When entering new markets, upfront localization and certification costs may temporarily increase per-vehicle cost, but these costs are amortized as deployment scales and become limited and manageable over time. So cost reduction comes from a combination of hardware, supply chain and operational gains.
Due to time restraints, I will conclude the call today. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect.