Pony AI Inc. American Depositary Shares 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead, George. Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone.

We appreciate you joining us today for Pony.ai's second quarter 2026 earnings call. Earlier today, we issued a press release with our financial and operating metrics, which is available on our IR website. An earnings presentation, which we will refer to during the conference call, can also be accessed and downloaded on our investor relations website. Joining me on today's call are Dr. James Peng, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Tiancheng Lou, Chief Technology Officer, and Dr. Leo Wang, Chief Financial Officer of the company. They will provide prepared remarks, followed by a Q&A session. Before we begin, please refer to the safe harbor statement in our earnings release, which applies to this call, as we will be making forward-looking statements.

Please also note that we will discuss non-GAAP measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under GAAP in our earnings release available on our IR website, and filings with the SEC and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. I will now hand it over to our chairman and CEO, Dr. James Peng.

Please go ahead. Thank you, George.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call today. We delivered another fantastic quarter, highlighted by multifold expansion across the board. First, strong top-line growth. Total revenue surged by 69% year-over-year, driven by a close to eight times jump in robotaxi revenue and over nine times surge in fare charging revenue. Second, rapid fleet scaling. Our robotaxi fleet expanded to 2,000 vehicles, putting us on track to deliver 3,500 vehicles by year-end. Third, expanded deployment. Domestically, we reinforced our leadership in tier 1 cities as we surpassed 1.5 million registered users. We also improved our network density with more deployed vehicles and operational coverage. Internationally, we unlocked demands by scaling our joint-deployment model. Currently, we have secured over 4,000 vehicle commitments with Uber and other overseas partners.

The expanded deployment in both China and overseas markets clearly shows that our dual-engine strategy is turning into robust top-line growth. Looking at our domestic operations first. The L4 industry in China is entering a new phase where higher standards are required to keep the industry on a sustainable, healthy trajectory. For any robotaxi company to enter into large-scale deployment, it now needs proven driverless capabilities, positive user satisfaction, and verified safety records. We are perfectly positioned to capitalize on this shift because we have already been operating well ahead of this curve. These rising standards will only widen our competitive moat and solidify our leadership in China. Our confidence actually is grounded in solid results from commercial robotaxi operations. We have three Gen-7 robotaxi vehicle models in our daily services, including the GAC Aion V, the BAIC Arcfox Alpha T5, and the Toyota bZ4X.

We are continuously improving user experience, which is the key driver for our organic user growth as our total registered users have surpassed 1.5 million. In Guangzhou, we extended our robotaxi services into the city center, now adding over 300 square kilometers since the beginning of this year. The operational area spans across Haizhu, Tianhe, Huangpu, and Panyu districts, covering a population of over 7 million. As a result, our driverless fleet is positioned to capture highly concentrated urban mobility demands. Shenzhen, known as China's Silicon Valley, serves also as a great showcase of our capability to navigate highly complex traffic scenarios. Our operational resilience was rigorously validated by corner cases such as the high-demand holidays, such as the Dragon Boat Festival, the peak rush hours, and heavy rainstorms. Despite these demanding conditions, we effectively met high-frequency commuting demands.

In addition, by seamlessly integrating three major transit hubs, including Bao'an International Airport, Shenzhen Bay Port, and the Shekou Cruise Port, we further expanded our network to provide users with greater convenience and more mobility options. Now turning into our global expansion. To meet the ever-increasing demand of L4 mobility in overseas markets, we have entered more international markets with huge consumer demand and commercial potential. We are using our joint-deployment model to form global alliance, fulfilling autonomous mobility demands in these international markets and creating values for our partners. To that end, we collaborate with multiple partners to accelerate our international pipeline. Currently, we have secured over 4,000 vehicle commitments, led by over 2,000 robotaxis across five European cities with Uber, alongside commitments from some other partners. Meanwhile, we continue to deepen our operations in existing markets. In Luxembourg, our deployment with Bolt and Stellantis keeps moving forward.

In Singapore, our service is now officially live for the general public on ComfortDelGro's ride-hailing app called Zig. These international demands are a direct endorsement of our Gen-7 robotaxi operations in China's tier 1 cities, where we have proven our superior driving capability, reliable 24/7 operations, high user satisfaction, and positive UE. I am confident that this proven model will continue to win partners with more vehicle deployment commitments and drive user adoption globally. Now let me elaborate a bit more on our joint-deployment model. As we expand our fleet across China and overseas, we leverage existing local ecosystems and our partners' on-the-ground expertise to drive capital efficient expansion. I am very pleased to share that the model is already delivering strong, tangible commercial results. First, look at the strong monetization was validated in Q2. By broadening our partnerships, we delivered significant quarter-over-quarter growth in revenue contribution.

That's a direct proof point of this DDM model's financial viability. Second, the joint-deployment model is the asset light one, where our partners fund the fleet. This fundamentally enables faster scaling, lower unit costs, and superior capital efficiency for our fleet expansion. Third, with fast scaling, DDM essentially unlocks massive commercial value for years to come. For example, we've recently expanded our partnership with Uber to target at premium markets. This creates a highly repeatable growth engine, allowing us to attract more partners and deliver even higher growth trajectory. Now let's move to our robotruck business. Our robotruck business delivered outstanding results in Q2, with revenue jumping more than 40% year-over-year. We actually expect this growth momentum to persist and even strengthen in the second half of this year. We continue to expand our long-haul operations with Sinotrans through our joint venture.

At the same time, our Gen-4 robotrucks have entered mass production and already begun commercial operations. Working with China Merchants Port, we launched our commercial deployment of robotrucks at Shenzhen's Mawan Port, where our fully driverless robotrucks operate together with other human-driven trucks. This success highlights our unique cross-segment synergies. We have leveraged our rich operational experience from urban robotaxis and long-haul robotrucks to enable our trucks to seamlessly navigate traffic interactions at the ports. As we pass the midpoint of the year, our acceleration across both domestic and international markets puts us well on track to surpass our 20 city goal by year-end. In China's tier-one cities, we will continue to deploy more vehicles to our fleet to widen our competitive moat and advance our scaling edge. At the same time, we are on track to enter multiple domestic new markets.

Internationally, the joint-deployment model will contribute top-line growth with great capital efficiency. This dual momentum gives us greater confidence in beating our original robotaxi revenue outlook, which is exceeding 3.5 times last year's level. Looking ahead, our focus remains clear: delivering long-term value creation and driving the commercialization of autonomous driving with capital efficiency. Now, I'll hand it over to our CTO, Tiancheng, to go over the technology progress. Tiancheng, please go ahead. Thank you, James.

Hello, everyone. This is Tiancheng. To start, our strong Q2 momentum is driven by our unique tech stack. This foundation allows us to scale rapidly and adopt seamlessly across both domestic and international markets. Starting with our domestic market, this is where we validate our technology in most challenging scenarios and translate this mastery into commercial value. Tier-one cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen are clear examples. In older urban cores and the major transit hubs, roads are narrow, residential neighborhoods are dense, and roadside parking are common. Our world model and the Virtual Driver prove to be more agile and precise in navigating these extreme conditions, ultimately delivering high commercial returns than regular scenarios. We also rapidly replicate this success to more high-premium urban market globally. Traffic rules and driving habits vary significantly across China, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.