(WRD)
Q4 2025 Earnings-Transcript
WeRide Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.08156, expectations were $-0.14324.
Operator: Good morning, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to WeRide’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 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 are WeRide’s Founder, Chairman and CEO, Dr. Tony Han; and CFO and Head of International, Ms. Jennifer Li. Before we continue, I’d 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 strategies and future plans.
These forward-looking statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation 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 announcements 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 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. And with that, I’ll now turn the call over to the company’s Founder, Chairman and CEO, Dr. Tony Han. Please go ahead, sir.
Xu Han: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As a global leader in autonomous driving, we delivered strong results over the past year with a record high revenue of RMB 685 million, growing 90% year-over-year, driven by expanding robotaxi deployments as well as robust demand for robobus and other autonomous driving products. Robotaxi revenue has increased 210% year-over-year, reflecting the continued commercialization of our technology. By today, our global robotaxi fleet size has reached a new height of 1,125 vehicles. We are seeing encouraging momentum across both our domestic operations in China and our international markets. As we continue to scale, I’ll walk you through the key developments driving our growth. Let’s first turn to China, which continues to be one of our most important operating markets.
During the period, we have advanced toward a more data-driven autonomy stack by incorporating end-to-end learning, leveraging large-scale data training and world model simulation as well as improving algorithm generalization. We also made solid progress in operating efficiency, fleet expansion, service coverage and user adoption. On the operation front, total cost of ownership decreased by approximately 38%, driven by reduction of vehicle BOM costs and improvement of operating efficiency. The BOM cost of our latest robotaxi GXR is cut by 15% enabled by the adoption of our cost-effective computing platform, HPC 3.0. At the same time, our remote assistance human-to-vehicle ratio improved from 1:10 in 2024 to 1:40, currently making labor cost marginal and further strengthening unit economics.
Fleet size and service coverage also continued to improve. Our commercial and testing fleet in China has grown to more than 800 robotaxis, covering over 1,000 square kilometers across key urban areas. As fleet density increased, we also saw meaningful improvement in service performance. Average daily orders per vehicle reached 15 trips over the past 6 months, rising to 26 during peak periods. Average passenger waiting time declined to under 10 minutes, reflecting stronger demand and improved vehicle utilization. We continued expanding our presence in Beijing and Guangzhou, focusing on populated area, connecting key transportation hubs such as major airports and railway stations, along with further penetration into downtown area. In Guangzhou, for example, our robotaxi service is now available in Tianhe District, one of the city’s most active commercial hubs.
On the product side, we launched a flexible free PUDO feature, allowing riders to select any pickup or drop-off location within the service area. At the same time, we broadened access through major mobility platforms, including Amap, WeChat and Tencent Mobility. Encouragingly, we are seeing substantial increase of registered users of WeRide robotaxi service. Take the fourth quarter as an example, the year-over-year growth of registered users exceeds 900%, reflecting stronger user acceptance and engagement. Overall, we believe WeRide’s long-standing leadership in robotaxi technology, combined with extensive real-world operational experience forms a durable and hard-to-replicate competitive moat, continues to resonate with users. As our operations scale, we expect further growth in vehicle utilization and user adoption going forward.
Let’s now turn to our international operations, where we continue to build on our progress expanding our global footprint. Today, we have deployed autonomous vehicles in 12 countries with official permits already granted in 8 of those markets. This progress demonstrates our ability to navigate complex regulatory environment while meeting local requirements. Taken together, these milestones position us as the most globally deployed autonomous driving company today. Europe is shaping up to be another major growth area for us. Back in November 2025, we achieved a historic milestone, receiving Europe’s first-ever driverless robotaxi permit for passenger service from Switzerland’s Federal Roads Office. That head start gives us a real advantage as we look to expand further across Europe in the coming years.
Apart from this, just this month, we added another country to our global map as we announced our entry into Slovakia. We are deploying our full product lineup there, launching the country’s first-ever AV program. Slovakia is also the fourth country for our European footprint. The Middle East remains one of the most promising regions. In Abu Dhabi, we secured the world’s first city level fully driverless robotaxi commercial permit outside the U.S. in October 2025. Today, our service covers about 70% of the city’s core area and passengers can book through various categories on Uber app, including Uber Comfort, Uber X, all the new autonomous category, Uber’s first dedicated autonomous ride option globally. In that quarter, we also launched commercial robotaxi rides in both Dubai and Riyadh.
We’ve also started pilot operations in Ras Al Khaimah, giving us a presence in a third UAE Emirate. In Asia Pacific, we are building early momentum with strong local presence. In Singapore, WeRide and Grab began autonomous vehicle testing in the Punggol district back in November 2025. Our robotaxi GXR and robobus are expected to open to the public by April 2026, making Punggol Singapore’s first residential neighborhood with an autonomous shuttle service. A big part of what makes all this possible is our disciplined approach to international expansion. Our strategy focuses on markets with supportive regulatory environment and favorable economic conditions that are conducive to sustainable operations. Today, our international robotaxi fleet has surpassed 250 vehicles, and we continue to scale deployments across key international markets, including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh, Switzerland, Slovakia and Singapore.
Each new market we enter becomes a regional blueprint for expansion into adjacent markets. Looking ahead, we expect our global robotaxi fleet to reach 2,600 by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and market conditions. These milestones represent the early stage of our long-term vision to deploy tens of thousands of robotaxis worldwide by 2030. While robotaxi services at the core of our business, we are actively diversifying into other areas of autonomous mobility to build a broader portfolio and generate additional revenue streams. Across our diversified applications, WeRide’s global AV fleet spanning robotaxis, robobuses, robovans and robosweepers grew rapidly from 1,089 vehicles at the end of 2024 to 2,113 as of today, strengthening our global presence across 12 countries.
Take our robobus business as an example, it has seen impressive growth in 2025, increasing by 190% year-over-year. We’ve entered multiple European markets, including Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain and Slovakia, where labor shortages in public transit systems are creating real opportunities for autonomous shuttles. By leveraging our technology to meet this demand, we’re able to address a pressing need while also expanding our market presence. Additionally, our L2+ advanced driver assistance system, WePilot 3.0. WePilot 3.0 is being adopted by leading OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, including Chery, GAC and Bosch. This system uses a one-stage end-to-end architecture with vision-based perception, enables vehicles to operate safely and efficiently across diverse driving conditions.
In the second China Urban Intelligent Driving competition, hosted by D1EV.COM, Chery Exeed, a mass market passenger car model powered by WePilot 3.0 made history by winning first place in 3 cities competition stops. This business expansion helps us capitalize on the growing demand for L2+ ADAS technologies even outside of our L4 fleet. Innovation remains at the heart of our strategy. Building on our strength in L2+ end-to-end systems, WeRide is converging its technology stack toward L4 by integrating end-to-end learning with large-scale simulation and real-world data loops to enhance generalization and edge case handling. Our latest development, WeRide Genesis is a general purpose simulation platform that integrates physical AI and generative AI.
WeRide GENESIS generates high fidelity driving scenarios much more efficiently, reducing simulation time for complex edge cases from days to minutes. This boosts our development efficiency and enables us to quickly test and deploy improvements to our systems while significantly reducing on-road testing costs reinforcing the technological moat underpinning our L2 to L4 product portfolio. On the hardware side, we’ve taken our partnership with Geely Farizon to the next level. The latest GXR as a purpose-built factory pre-installed autonomous vehicle is delivering higher safety consistency and lower unit cost. The upgraded model incorporates our proprietary HPC 3.0, a high-performance computing platform, which is a more compute-efficient architecture.
And here’s the number that really shows the efficiency gain. Per vehicle production time is now under 10 minutes. These advancements will give us a significant edge in terms of both vehicle performance and scalability of our global robotaxi fleet. With that overview, I’ll now turn the call over to our CFO, who will walk you through our financial performance and outlook in more detail.
Xuan Li: Thank you, Tony. Hello, everyone. Before we dive into the financials, I want to highlight that all figures are in RMB and comparisons are year-over-year unless stated otherwise. Now let’s discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial performance. Looking back, Q4 2025 will be remembered as a defining chapter in WeRide’s journey as we continue to make steady progress in scaling operations, improving unit economics and advancing our technological leadership. Our fleet and geographic coverage grew significantly, showing strong momentum as a global leader in autonomous driving. Now let me walk you through the financial performance that reflects these developments. In Q4 2025, total revenue was CNY 314 million, representing an increase of 123%.
Product revenue increased 309% to CNY 211 million, mainly driven by increased sales of robotaxis and robobuses. Service revenue increased 15% to CNY 103 million. For the full year 2025, total revenue increased 90% to record high CNY 685 million. Product revenue and service revenue were CNY 360 million and CNY 325 million, respectively, representing an increase of 310% and 19%, respectively. Robotaxi continues to be one of the most crucial drivers among the business lines. In Q4 2025, WeRide has reached another record high quarterly robotaxi revenue since its foundation as its robotaxi revenue has increased 66% to CNY 51 million. For the full year 2025, robotaxi revenue also achieved an annual record high of CNY 148 million with a 210% growth year-over-year.
This growth is powered by our asset-light model. We provide the autonomous driving brain while mobility and fleet partners handle operations and vehicle ownership. This keeps vehicles off our balance sheet, enables efficient scaling and aligns incentives to deliver a consistent user experience. Our robotaxi revenue is also supported by a combination of ongoing service fee and recurring ride-hailing revenue share from platform partners. Our global expansion in robotaxi operations has firmly established us as a leader in the rapidly evolving autonomous mobility landscape. In particular, our international business is becoming an increasingly important driver of group revenue. For full year 2025, overseas markets contributed approximately 29% of total revenue, spanning a diverse set of geographies, including the Middle East, Europe and Asia Pacific.
At the same time, our focus on operating efficiency has allowed us to sustain healthy margins even as we scale. In Q4 2025, group level gross profit increased 74% to CNY 89 million with a group level gross margin of 28%. For the full year 2025, group level gross profit was CNY 207 million, representing an increase of 87% with a group level gross margin of 30%. These results highlight the strength of our business model and reinforce our confidence in our global expansion strategy. In Q4 2025, operating expenses increased slightly by 2% year-over-year to CNY 655 million, with R&D representing 63% of the total. For full year 2025, operating expenses decreased by 11% to CNY 2.04 billion, with R&D representing 67% of the total. The decrease in operating expenses was primarily driven by lower administrative expenses, partially offset by increases in R&D and selling expenses.
As our primary investment area, the rise in R&D spending reflects our focus on long-term technological leadership, while disciplined cost management kept overall operating expenses under control. To break down further, R&D expenses increased by 29% to CNY 411 million in Q4 2025 and increased by 26% to CNY 1.37 billion for the full year 2025, primarily driven by our continued investments in top-tier talent and the expansion of our next-generation data center infrastructure, building a high-performance backbone to support our L2+ to L4 autonomous driving capabilities. This continuous R&D commitment is essential to maintaining our competitive edge and driving future growth. Administrative expenses decreased by 29% to CNY 217 million in Q4 2025 and decreased by 48% to CNY 596 million for the full year 2025.
The decrease was mainly driven by lower share-based compensation and partially offset by growing professional service fees, personnel costs and depreciation and amortization expenses. Selling expenses increased by 76% to CNY 27 million in Q4 2025 and increased by 37% to CNY 74 million for the full year 2025. These increases are in line with the growth of our business. Our net loss narrowed by 6% to CNY 5,565 million in Q4 2025 and narrowed by 34% to CNY 1.65 billion for the full year 2025. Building on our successful Hong Kong IPO in Q4 2025, we ended the year with a strong capital position. As of the 31st of December 2025, we had total capital reserves of CNY 7.13 billion, comprising CNY 6.97 billion in cash and cash equivalents and time deposits, CNY 144 million in investments in wealth management products and CNY 19 million in restricted cash.
We maintained short-term bank loans of CNY 324 million to support daily operations. With disciplined cash deployment, this level of capital provides a solid operating buffer and underscores our financial strength to support continued growth. On the 23rd of March 2026, our Board of Directors authorized a share repurchase program under which we may repurchase up to USD 100 million of our Class A ordinary shares, including in the form of American depositary shares over the next 12 months. This authorization also reflects our commitment to shareholders and our confidence in the long-term value of WeRide. Looking ahead, we are moving forward with clarity and conviction. By end of 2026, we expect to have 2,600 robotaxis globally, marking the first phase of our path toward tens of thousands of robotaxis by 2030.
As our fleet scales, we see a clear path to extending our proven deployment model to more cities worldwide, supported by a strong balance sheet, relentless focus on operating efficiency and deepening partnerships, we are well positioned to lead the next chapter for autonomous driving industry. With that, operator, we’re now ready to take some questions.
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Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Kai Xiao of CICC.
Unknown Analyst: This is Ben from CICC. So I have 2 questions. First one is quite a few OEM and Tier 1 peers are also working on L4 robotaxi such as Horizon Robotics and Momenta. So what’s your view on this matter? And the second one is on the L2+. So recently, vRS ADAS showed an industry-leading capability in a highly challenging real-world competition. So could you share the key differentiation between vRS ADAS capability versus the peers?
Xu Han: Thank you very much, Kai, for these 2 important questions. And I truly appreciate you asked these 2 questions. So first of all, the first question is about like quite a few OEM and Tier 1s you just mentioned like a few names like Horizon and Momenta. They claim that was robotaxi and what’s my view. So first of all, I think as a first mover and the industrial leader — as the CEO of first mover and industrial leader of autonomous driving company like WeRide, I have to say we welcome other players to join this competition. And that means like the whole ecosystem and the whole industry is really attractive and there’s a great market potential. So only in a very interesting and juicy and profitable market, you can see — you can experience competition.
Having that said, I just want to remind like some competitors or new players, the difference between ADAS system, which they are very familiar and the L4 driverless robotaxi system, which they are not familiar, okay? A lot of time, people have to do some contractual of extrapolation from what they have — what they are familiar like L2++ system and then they want to think, okay, we just increase the reliability, increase a little bit speed of our system and we can achieve driverless operation. My answer to that kind of extrapolation or extrapolative thinking is like you don’t — you haven’t seen the difficulty what you haven’t seen. So the thing is like why am I in a position to say that? Because WeRide is the only company currently to my best knowledge in this world, good at ADAS system, at the same time, good at driverless operation or robotaxi.
So for example, in China Urban Intelligent Driving competition just finished like last month, we — actually, 2 days ago, we won the championship once again. So WeRide is the only company won this championship 3 times in a row, we made a history. So which means like in that competition, the companies you mentioned like Momenta and Horizon, they all enter the competition, but WeRide just won 3 times over them. So we know pretty much the ADAS, and we are very familiar in the ADAS area that they are familiar. On the other hand side, I would say, if you want to claim yourself to be an L4 level autonomous driving company or a robotaxi company, you have to have a substantial operation. What do I mean? You should have at least 50 driverless cars running in the city with a population of at least 1 million people, okay?
If you just have 10 cars and with a safety driver behind steering wheel, you cannot claim yourself as a robotaxi company. Of course, a lot of people can claim like you are working on something, that’s great. But to make sure you are real the player of the field, you have to demonstrate you have the real driverless operation. Therefore, I want to emphasize the technology barrier between L2++ and L4 is huge. And to really make yourself like a significant serious player in the robotaxi field, you really need to demonstrate your capability in driverless operation. Besides, there’s other factors like hardware maturity, software integration, full redundancy architecture, regulatory approvals, operational stability, all of these factors traditional ADAS company haven’t experienced.
So my view is like WeRide and also with some other leading autonomous driving L4 level robotaxi company has really a strong advantage. So we welcome this kind of competition, but we are very confident with our current leading position, our current footprint in the international market. That is a huge gap. I don’t foresee any newcomers can catch up soon. So this is my answer to the first question. Okay. The second question is about our recent extraordinary results in China Urban Intelligent Driving competition. And so what differentiates us between our peers? So I think the ranking and scores tells all, right? So this kind of autonomous — this China Urban Intelligent Driving competition hold once every month or once every 2 months, depends on period, okay?
And in the history, there’s only one company won this kind of championship twice in a row. That was Huawei. At that time, they have a very big advantage. But there has never been a company that has won this kind of championship 3 times in a row. Since last year, November, and then December and this year, March, we won 3 times in a row. The competition has been entered by all the companies, famous autonomous driving company of cars in China, you can name it. XPeng, Li Auto, NIO, Xiaomi, Momenta, Horizon, Huawei, Zeekr, they all entered the competition. But we write won this kind of competition 3 times in a row. That demonstrates our capability. And what is the secret sauce behind it, we have several. First, one of our one-stage end-to-end system training based on both synthetic and real data from our L4-level autonomous driving robotaxi from our L2++ level data.
And that helps a lot and our unique one-stage end-to-end architecture which is different from LLA — from VLA, and that one gives us a big advantage. Thirdly, the data generated from our GENESIS model. And this GENESIS model is superior, and it can generate data according to our needs and also reduce our data collection cost by 75% with all this technology combined give us a kind of leading position in the ADAS field. That’s all my answer to these 2 questions. Again, thanks for the question, Kai.
Operator: We will now take our next question from the line of Ming-Hsun Lee of Bank of America.
Ming-Hsun Lee: I also have 2 questions for you. So first, could you please elaborate the robotaxi expansion plan of both China and international markets? And what is the delivery schedule for the 2,000 vehicles signed with Geely Farizon? And second question, could you also share your forward-looking plan for the Middle East, given peers’ market entry, geopolitical conflict and also the involvement of the partnership with Uber. Specifically, what is the time line of the deployment of 1,200 vehicle with Uber?
Xuan Li: Okay. I’ll take the first question. I guess you can take the second question. Thank you, Ming. Both China and international markets are core to WeRide’s growth strategy. As we just mentioned, we recently signed still that it’s actually an extended agreement with Geely Farizon for additional 2,000 upgraded robotaxi, we call GXR in 2026. So by end of last year, our fleet has surpassed over 1,000 robotaxis. Taking into consideration of the phased delivery of the newly like pre-installed GXR and then also the retirement of some of the older vehicles we have, we expect to reach around 2,600 robotaxi globally by end of this year. China definitely is going to be the — it is a cornerstone of our business, where we focus on cities with very supportive policies for autonomous driving and high population densities, those Tier 1 cities in China, like, say, Guangzhou and Beijing, they both fit this profile very well.
In Guangzhou, for example, we plan to gradually scale towards city level operation like what we already have in Abu Dhabi. We are also expanding into another major Tier 1 city in China, and we look forward to share more of that details soon with everyone. And on the international side, Middle East continued to be a very strong base for us. We run the largest robotaxi fleet at city level in Abu Dhabi, and we are the first who started robotaxi public operation in Dubai and in Riyadh as well. So we’ll continue to — our strong like momentum in the Middle East. Also, Europe is a key focus. Our robotaxi obtained the first and only driverless operation permit in Europe from like the Switzerland government last year. Building on this momentum, we are really looking to further expand it in market, like, say, Madrid and potentially one more core city in Europe this year.
And of course, we’ll continue to expand our robotaxi operation in Zurich as well. Tony, do you want to take the next question?
Xu Han: Sure. So just kind of a general reminder to everybody like the second question is really about our future plan for the Middle East and what is the time line of deployment claimed 1,200 vehicles with Uber. Right now, we have around like 200 vehicles in Middle East. And together with Uber, we plan to add at least 1,000 more by 2027. And we expect to be the first to reach 1,000 vehicle scale in this region, okay? It’s really not easy, and we have spent a ton of efforts and planned a lot and sometimes retrofit and redesign our vehicles and do lots of technology efforts to meet this number. Operationally, we are carrying out business as usual. I think you have know we are already running city level full driverless robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi, and we aim to do the same in Dubai this year.
We are currently the only company offering robotaxi service to the public in both cities, and that first-mover advantage is meaningful. Our scale regulatory progress, strong partnerships and safety record all support this position. On the geopolitical tensions you have — we are currently experiencing, we are monitoring developments very closely with a continued focus on the safety of our local teams and maintaining a reliable operation. So far, we have not seen any material impact on our business. Our global footprint and diversified presence also give us confidence in navigating potential uncertainties. Regarding our partnership with Uber, our 5-year 15-city rollout plan remains on track, and we expect to announce new city launches in due course this year.
Okay? That’s the answer to this question. Any other questions?
Operator: We will take our next question from Tim Hsiao of Morgan Stanley.
Tim Hsiao: This is Tim from Morgan Stanley. I have 2 questions. I think the first one is basically, I want to follow up on the L4 competition because at NVIDIA GDC earlier this month, we noticed that WeRide again showcased the robotaxi GXR. I think the model is powered by NVIDIA Hyperion platform and the Thor SoC. Although we noticed the collaboration with NVIDIA has helped WeRide to effectively reduce the cost, accelerate global expansion. But these days, I think NVIDIA also supplies similar ready solution to many of WeRide’s competitors and also automaker for the long-term L4 development. So my question is, how does WeRide address the challenge of robotaxi homogenization in the long term and can keep successfully differentiating? That’s my first question.
Xu Han: Thank you, Tim. This is a great question. So first of all, I think currently, like many players, they define their autonomous driving system based on NVIDIA’s Thor AGX platform. But I want to emphasize, just to make announcements like we are going to adopt NVIDIA Thor AGX is easy. But to really make a reliable and workable autonomous driving system based on NVIDIA’s Thor AGX is very challenging. WeRide team up with Lenovo and NVIDIA spent 2 years to design our HPC 3.0 auto grade. And we actually produced the first of its kind of computational — autograde computational platform for robotaxi with a computational power of 2,000 TOPS. You can look around and see whether any other people have this kind of computational platform of 2,000 TOPS and with redundancy, not easy, okay?
We have lots of buildup on top of this autograde computational platform. Besides, we build up our simulation, simulator and data collection integrated platform GENESIS. And this one can generate a lot of data and can be integrated into the training and then can be evaluated with HPC 3.0. So that one is actually a very, very advanced system. So in the long run, I don’t think like just a general, very generic universal platform can help like experienced or not that strong technological player so that everybody can become a significant player in robotaxi, i.e., democratize the whole industry. No, it’s not like that. People actually have tried that before. I just want people to remember like 4, 5 years ago, Baidu rolled out this Apollo platform.
The goal is very close to what NVIDIA want to do is roll out open source some code and everybody can work on it. But today, to our best knowledge, no driverless robotaxi fleet are developed use Apollo. Even Baidu used his own closed source platform to work on it. So whether that open source can be used by some third party and then deploy reliable driverless operation is an unproved concept. And actually, I’m quite skeptical on that. So we are very confident for our competitive edge in the next 5 years and in the next 10 years, and we have a leading and — leading position, I think, we have maybe larger and larger leading advance. So in that part, we are quite advanced. That’s my answer to your question, Tim.
Tim Hsiao: Thank you, Tony, for sharing all the details. My second question is also a quick follow-up regarding our global partnership with Uber because I think most of us noticed that WeRide has formed a close strategic tied up with Uber for a global expansion. Yet in the meantime, I think Uber has a ride-hailing platform, the company continues to onboard more robotaxi service provider like in the U.S., Rivian, Zoox, Motional and in the rest of the world, like Wayve, et cetera. So facing this kind of dynamic of both cooperation and competition, how does WeRide ensure its long-term share of ride-hailing orders in overseas market can keep growing and the stay as a major supplier to Uber? And lastly, how does WeRide plan to enhance its capability globally? That’s my second question.
Xuan Li: Tony, you want to take this?
Xu Han: Jen, if you want, you can go ahead to take. Yes, please go ahead.
Xuan Li: Yes, I’ll take this question. So Tim, first of all, Uber is an important shareholder and partner for WeRide. We believe their incentive is to maximize our WeRide’s like robotaxi utilization. And as a matter of fact, with all the like partnership they have signed to today, you can only get robotaxi from Uber on the Uber platform from WeRide and from Waymo. That’s it. And we do have a very concrete plan to scale together. In the key markets, like say, Middle East, we have the first and foremost operation right, and we’re going to have launched 1,200 robotaxi, which will be fully delivered by 2027. This is going to be a very, very large and definitely the largest robotaxi fleet outside China and the U.S. And on top of that, we operate robotaxi, robobus, robovan and other products globally.
We act like more like an infrastructure partner to — directly to the local government. Like say, in the , we are bringing our robotaxi, robobus, robovan, robosweeper all together in one go. We are the infrastructure partner to those local governments. So we’re not just like Uber supplier, and we own most of the autonomous driving license. The government directly issues license to us. So also in the presentation we just did in the video, you can see that our global taxi partners worldwide, including besides Uber, and we also have like Grab, ] TXCI and a number of local partners. We have different local partners in different local markets. So yes — and just to emphasize on the licensing moat, we are the only one that holds autonomous driving permits in 8 countries.
Based on our knowledge, this is definitely the broadest in our industry. This creates a very high barrier to entry. And also even on Uber and through like other product categories like whenever we have like the public service deployment, we are building the WeRide brand recognition directly with end consumers as well. So if you talk like, say, in Singapore, like in Abu Dhabi, in Middle East, in Dubai, in those cities, people know that the WeRide brand quite well, I would say. So the bottom line is like we are not just one of Uber’s vendor where their equity-linked key operator and key robotaxi providers in key markets with a proven unit economic — economy. And then we think our multi-scenario, multi-country footprint will make us a very essential part of the urban mobility infrastructure, not just a replaceable supplier anyone.
That’s my answer to your question.
Operator: We will now take our next question from Jiajie Shen of JPMorgan.
Jiajie Shen: Congratulations on the very strong results. My first question is regarding fleet utilization. How do you expect it to grow in China? And what are the implications to unit economics? And my second question is regarding overseas business. Your global business is showing great progress, and this is truly impressive. Could you please share more about key figures of the overseas business in 2025? And what are the 2026 guidance of key operational and financial metrics?
Xu Han: Okay. I will take the first question. The first question is about the fleet utilization growth in China. And also, it’s about like the implications to unit economics. So first of all, we are taking a number of steps to improve utilization, raising fleet density in existing service areas, rolling out free pickup, drop-off, i.e. PUDO, and extending operation hours. And we are seeing that translate into results. User adoption rate has been strong. Our robotaxi user cases in China grew over 900% year-over-year in Q4. This is an extraordinary number, and I don’t expect we can keep this kind of number every year, but still it’s kind of extraordinary number. And our vehicle utilization is also trending up. Today, each vehicle averages about 15 trips per day with peak days reaching around 26 trips, some peak day like festival or some very special Valentine’s Day.
The average trip distance is about 5 kilometers and pricing is roughly RMB 2 per kilometer, which represents 30% to 50% discount to traditional ride-hailing. This is a deliberate promotional strategy as we scale region by region and drive our user adoption. As we expand to citywide coverage like what we are working on to Guangzhou and the deepening integrations with platforms such as Amap from Alibaba, WeChat from Tencent and Tencent Mobility to match convenience of traditional ride-hailing. We expect pricing to move closer to the standard rate around RMB 3 per kilometer. At this point, we see a clear and achievable path to improve unit economy in China. Over years, as our fleet size and coverage expand, we are targeting 25 trips per vehicle per day because autonomous driving, the autonomous driving vehicles, robotaxi, they don’t need a driver and then you don’t want to — you don’t have an exhaustive driver.
Therefore, we can keep on going as long as we can take orders. At steady state, we expect contribution margins in China to be over 40%, okay? That’s my answer to your first question. I think Yes, that’s my answer to your question, yes.
Xuan Li: The second question is about the overseas business and some of the forecast, right? So yes, so our international business is growing at a really, really pleasant rate. And for the Q4 2025, the overseas revenue was up 140% year-over-year, and it’s contributing 31% of the total revenue and with the gross margin at like 40-ish, almost 50%. And for the full year 2025 and our overseas revenue grew about 305% year-over-year and accounting for roughly 29% of the total revenue. So the gross margin was around almost 50% as well. So overseas market offers a significantly stronger like growth and profitability potential. For example, our Middle East subsidiary is already profitable on a stand-alone basis. So looking ahead to 2026, we expect the revenue to continue to grow at a healthy pace.
We are also on track to reach our goal for the global robotaxi fleet as well as for different regions. We believe we can still reach the goal by end of the year. And on the gross margin side, we expect the gross margin to remain relatively stable for the international business. And yes, on the cash side, the operating cash flow may increase modestly on the group level since we are continuing to invest for talent and our R&D to support the long-term like core growth of the company. We’ll provide more detailed guidance in the upcoming earnings release. But directionally, this reflects how we are thinking about how we build up the business and the financial forecast.
Operator: We will now take our next question from Leo You of CLSA.
Yang You: It’s Leo from CLSA. Also 2 questions from me. And first is, could you please walk us through the key cost reductions and technology innovations behind the upgraded GXR? And how would that drive further unit economics improvement going forward? And secondly, we are also very glad to see that you announced the share buyback plan. And could you please elaborate more on the thought process and how you’re going to execute the share buyback plan going forward?
Xuan Li: Okay. I’ll take both questions — I’ll answer both questions. Thank you, Leo. The first one is on the cost reduction on GXR. And maybe I try to answer the question in a different way from the total cost of ownership perspective. As we mentioned earlier, the TCO for the China fleet has declined by as much as 38% in 2025. And the 2 main factors — the 2 main drivers are below. First of all, we have — which is now Tony has already shared, there’s a significant improvement in the remote assistance ratio from 1:10 in 2024 to 1:40 by end of 2025. So we also have a similar efficiency gains for the grid operator. So on both ends, we — there’s efficiency improvement on the operation level. And second, we have seen overall a 30% reduction in the BOM cost, that including the upgraded the HPC as well as for the pre-installed new GXR robotaxi.
Meanwhile, now we are starting to have like a larger volume. So scale is starting to deliver the real benefit. As our fleet expands, we see a meaningful cost reduction through the volume procurement. Also on the software side, I still want to remind everyone, so the game changer here is really our WeRide GENESIS. This GENESIS — the GENESIS allows us to handle the edge case much more efficiently and accelerate the iteration cycles. So it’s easier for us to deploy in a much larger ODD and with less remote assistance needed. So together, this will deliver a very meaningful improvement in our cost structure. Yes. And the other one is regarding the share buyback. So today, our Board of Directors authorized a share repurchase program effectively as of March 23, 2026, which is today as well.
We may repurchase up to USD 100 million worth of our Class A ordinary share from both Hong Kong Stock Exchange and NASDAQ over the next 12 months. It is actually subject to the scope and limit of the repurchase mandate granted by the shareholder of the company on March 13, 2026, and approval of a similar repurchase mandate to be put forward to shareholders at the upcoming 2026 Annual General Meeting for the company. So our proposed repurchase may be made from time to time on the open market at the prevailing market price and the privately negotiated transaction in block trade, depending on the market condition and in accordance to the applicable rule and regulation. Yes. That’s my answer to your question, Leo.
Operator: We will now take our next question from Xinyu Fang of UBS.
Xinyu Fang: Congratulations on delivering solid revenue growth and operation expansion. My first question is about revenue structure. We noticed that there has been quarterly fluctuations in the contribution of product and services revenue. How should we think about the revenue structure of the company going forward, both in the near term and medium term? And as for my second question, apart from the CNY 100 million share buyback program, could you please share a little bit more on the future cash deployment plan of WeRide?
Xu Han: Okay. I will take the first question. So — so in 2025, our robotaxi contributed 22% of the total revenue and robobus contributed 34% and our L2++ ADAS and data service contribute 29%. Together, these 3 pillars accounted for around 85% of our business with robovan and robosweeper making up the remaining 15%. So that’s the detailed numbers. But if you do forward looking — looking ahead, robotaxi, robobus and L2++ will remain our core growth engines, supported by strong synergies across our integrated autonomous driving ecosystem. We have a platform strategy. Robotaxi is the fastest-growing segment with significant scalability and improving unit economics, especially overseas. So we expect its revenue share to increase over time.
Just want to emphasize, WeRide inherently is a robotaxi technology company, okay? We have many products, but robotaxi is the core. Robobus is currently our most geographically deployed business and benefits from clear synergies with robotaxi in both regulation and commercialization. L2++ continues to gain traction with partners like Chery, GAC and Bosch, serving both as a revenue stream and a platform to validate our technology. Meanwhile, robovans and robosweepers provide complementary value with lower cost, fixed route operation that also help us enter and educate new markets. Overall, this diversified portfolio give us both scale and balance, which we see a key strength. I think if you look at all autonomous driving company in this world, WeRide is unique and only WeRide adopt this technology.
Xuan Li: Okay. I’ll answer Xin’s last question. So for the cash deployment side, we end 2025 with a little bit over CNY 1 billion in the cash reserve and which is a strong foundation to support our expansion. And our net cash burn rate is less than USD 200 million based on the past pattern. At the same time, our revenue growth is really accelerating, we can see from today’s results. And our operating cash flow is becoming increasingly a more important funding source for us. So as we scale, we are not just like investing and like raising capital from the capital market and then spending just on R&D, that’s it. We are generating cash ourselves and at a relatively fast speed as well. So overall, we are in a very solid liquidity position, and we’ll continue to invest with discipline while we are — we still maintain ample runway to execute our growth strategy. Yes.
Operator: Thank you. Due to time constraints, I’ll conclude the call today. Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
Xu Han: Thank you very much.
Xuan Li: Thank you.
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