Pony.ai

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

Pony.ai sells one thing wearing three commercial costumes: a vehicle-agnostic "Virtual Driver" (full-stack L4 autonomy — software + a sensor/compute kit + ops) monetized through (i) robotaxi services, (ii) robotruck services, and (iii) licensing & applications (intelligent-driving software, domain controllers, V2X) to OEMs/Tier-1s. Founded 2016 by two ex-Baidu/ex-Google engineers; it is "among the first in China to secure licenses for fully driverless robotaxi operations across all four Tier-1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen)" and "the first company in China to receive regulatory approval for driverless robotruck platooning tests on cross-provincial highways".

The money, FY2025:

• Revenue US$90.0M (FY24 $75.0M, FY23 $71.9M) — +20.0% YoY.
• Gross profit $14.2M, 15.7% gross margin (FY24 15.2%, FY23 23.5% — margin has compressed as low-margin fleet operations grew).
• Operating loss −$260.9M; net loss attributable to Pony AI −$134.0M (FY24 −$274.1M); the narrower net loss is not operational — it's a +$128.0M non-cash "change in fair value of trading securities" swing, plus $43.0M investment income, masking a worsening cash burn.

Revenue by business line, FY23 → FY24 → FY25 ($000):

The headline is robotaxi services +129% YoY (7.3→16.6M) — that is the line the whole thesis rides on. By nature of revenue (the deeper cut), product sales jumped 7.6→33.3M (ADC/domain-controller hardware shipments), while engineering-solution services fell 28.0→16.5M — a mix shift from one-off engineering fees toward product + recurring operations.

Contract structure / key terms. Robotaxi: mostly engineering-solution fees to OEMs/TNCs today, plus a small-but-exploding passenger-fare component; robotruck: per-mile / per-tonne transport fees to logistics platforms; licensing: fixed-fee + some product sales. The critical structural fact: a large slice of robotruck revenue is a single related party (Sinotrans via the Cyantron JV — see Lens 10). Self-owned fleets are increasingly shifted to third-party "fleet companies" who "bear substantially all of capital expenditure related to fleet acquisition" — i.e., an asset-light pivot that moves fleet capex off Pony's balance sheet.

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

Map: upstream silicon/sensors → Pony Virtual Driver (software + ADK integration) → OEM-built vehicle → fleet operator → rider/logistics customer.

Named stakeholders along the chain:

• Compute / sensors (upstream inputs): Pony builds a proprietary ADK (autonomous-driving kit) and vehicle domain controllers; the filing does not name the SoC vendor, but the Gen-7 cost story (below) implies a deliberate BOM-reduction program on the compute+LiDAR stack. n/a — specific chip supplier not disclosed in filing. (Industry context: Chinese L4 stacks have historically leaned on NVIDIA Orin/Thor-class compute and domestic LiDAR (Hesai/RoboSense).)
• OEM vehicle partners (the bottleneck that matters): Toyota + GTMC (a three-way JV for mass-producing driverless robotaxis in China — Toyota is also a 9.8% shareholder), plus BAIC, GAC, SAIC for overseas-market deployment using their supply chains and after-sales networks. The 300th Gen-7 (a BAIC model) rolled off in Oct 2025.
• Fleet operators / demand aggregators: Pony's own fleet + third-party fleet companies (the capex-bearers) + Uber (May 2025 global platform deal; Mar 2026 Europe launch via partner Verne in Zagreb), Dubai RTA, and announced Singapore / Middle East local operators.
• Robotruck demand: Sinotrans (China's largest freight-logistics company) via the Cyantron JV — the single largest customer relationship.

Chokepoints / single-source dependencies: (1) OEM mass-production capacity — Pony does not build cars; the Gen-7 ramp is gated by Toyota/BAIC/GAC lines. (2) Regulatory permits are the true upstream input for the robotaxi business — see Lens 8/10; the April 2026 nationwide permit freeze is a supply-chain chokepoint dressed as policy. (3) Sinotrans concentration on the robotruck side. Names are present — this lens passes.

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

What is actually defensible:

• Regulatory/operational head-start (the real moat today): first-mover driverless permits across all four China Tier-1 cities + cross-provincial robotruck platooning approval; 65.0M cumulative autonomous km as of Mar 31, 2026. In L4, validated miles + city-level permits are the scarce asset, and Pony has a multi-year lead over all but Baidu in China.
• Founder/engineering pedigree: CEO (ex-Baidu Chief Architect of AD, ex-Google) + CTO (ex-Baidu youngest Principal Engineer, 2× Code Jam champion) — a genuinely elite autonomy team (Lens 9).
• OEM JV lock-in (Toyota): a strategic-investor OEM JV is a switching-cost moat if it converts to volume — Toyota at 9.8% has skin in the game.
• Cost curve as a moat-in-progress: a claimed ~70% BOM reduction on the Gen-7 ADK and a target <RMB230,000 total Gen-7 BOM (vehicle + kit) by mid-2027. If real, this is the most important competitive lever — hardware is ~80% of AV cost, so whoever gets the kit cheapest wins the unit-economics race.

Bargaining power (who needs whom): weak today. Pony needs OEMs (to build) and TNCs/Uber (for demand) more than they need Pony — there are 3–4 credible Chinese L4 vendors competing for the same OEM slots and ride-hailing integrations. The Uber deal is non-exclusive (Uber also partners WeRide, Baidu, etc.). Pricing power over riders is negative — fares are still promotional/discounted.

Verdict on moat: real but narrow and time-boxed — a permit-and-miles lead plus an elite team, not yet a durable economic moat. The moat compounds only if the cost curve + fleet scale arrive before Baidu's scale advantage and a price war erode it.

Lens 4 · Segments

Pony reports by business activity (above) but does not disclose segment EBITDA/operating income — n/a — segment-level profitability not disclosed in the 20-F. What the data shows:

• Robotruck (45.1%, $40.6M) — the revenue base, but flat YoY (40.4→40.6M) and explicitly "relatively low gross margin at its current early stage"; heavily Sinotrans-dependent.
• Robotaxi (18.5%, $16.6M) — small but +129% YoY and accelerating hard (Q1'26: robotaxi revenue +395% YoY, fare-charging +456% ).
• Licensing & applications (36.4%, $32.8M) — recovered +19.7% off a FY24 dip; management guides this to shrink as a share over time.

Geography: operations centered on China Tier-1 cities; international footprint now spans Europe (Croatia/Zagreb, Luxembourg entity), Middle East (UAE FZCO, Saudi entity, Dubai RTA), and East Asia (Japan entity, Singapore). The filing does not break revenue by geography — n/a — geographic revenue split not disclosed. Direction: decelerating-then-reaccelerating total (FY24 +4.3%, FY25 +20.0%), with the mix rotating decisively toward robotaxi + product hardware. Cause: Gen-7 mass production (started Jul 2025) + city-wide commercial permits (Guangzhou/Shenzhen/Beijing, late 2025).

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Phase B — Measure performance

Lens 5 · Earnings Result

Most recent reported quarter — Q1 2026 (reported ~May 26, 2026):

• Revenue $34.3M, +145.0% YoY (vs $14.0M Q1'25) — a forecast-beating print; stock rose ~10% pre-market on the day.
• Robotaxi revenue +395.4% YoY; fare-charging revenue +456.5%; robotaxi quarterly revenue ≈ RMB59.1M (~$8.6M).
• Service revenue $16.7M (+61.4%); product revenue $17.5M (+384.4%) on ADC shipment volumes.
• Targets raised: 2026 robotaxi revenue from "3×" to ">3.5× FY25"; year-end fleet from 3,000 to >3,500.

FY2025 full-year backdrop: revenue $90.0M (+20%); gross margin 15.7% (down from 23.5% in FY23 — margin compression from the low-margin fleet-ops mix). R&D $217.4M (24× revenue-line gross profit; down from $240.2M in FY24 as FY24 carried a $102M SBC spike). Operating loss −$260.9M. Operating cash burn −$165.0M (worse than FY24's −$110.8M and FY23's −$115.4M) — the burn is accelerating even as revenue grows, because scaling the fleet costs cash up front.

Balance-sheet flags: cash & equivalents fell $536.0M → $293.5M over FY25, but total liquidity actually rose — short-term investments jumped $209M → $872M and long-term investments $131M → $455M (idle-cash management into deposits/bonds/CDs). Total assets $1.81B, total liabilities only $103.8M, shareholders' equity $1.71B. Receivables fell ($28.6M → $23.6M) while revenue rose — a clean signal (no receivables bloat). Net cash position ~$429.5M ($444.7M cash-and-investments vs $15.1M debt).

Market reaction / what's priced in: despite the Q1 beat and raised guidance, the stock is down ~40% YTD (as of May 2026) and trades near the low end of a $4.54–$24.92 52-week range. The tape is telling you the market does not trust the growth to survive the permit freeze + dilution risk — beats are not being rewarded.

Lens 6 · Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

No transcripts on disk (transcripts=0); reconstructed from web:

• Tone shift over the last ~3 prints: from "early-stage commercialization, prove the tech" (IPO/FY24) → to "unit-economics breakeven achieved, now scale" (Q4'25 → Q1'26). The new, repeated phrases: city-wide unit-economics breakeven (Guangzhou Nov 2025, Shenzhen Feb 2026), BOM cost reduction, Gen-7 mass production, fleet to 3,500. Management is visibly more confident and more willing to put hard operating numbers on the table (RMB394 peak daily net revenue/vehicle; 25 orders/vehicle/day).
• What they've stopped emphasizing: pure engineering-solution/licensing revenue (the legacy cash cow) — consistent with guiding it down as a share. They've gone quiet on near-term GAAP profitability (still years out).
• Credibility check: they raised targets mid-year (3,000→3,500 fleet) — a tone of conviction, but one that now collides with the April 2026 national permit freeze, which the call narrative does not fully resolve. Sentiment: improving operationally, but front-running a regulatory reality.

Lens 7 · Comps

Provenance-critical — multiples are `` with date or n/a. The robotaxi cohort trades on revenue multiples and strategic option value, not earnings (all are deeply loss-making):

EV/Sales for PONY and WRD are `` — market cap ÷ latest revenue, then adjusted for the large net-cash balances (EV < mkt cap); I did not find a sourced sell-side EV/Sales multiple, so treat the ~36× / ~22× as derived, not quoted. The read: PONY trades at a meaningful premium to WeRide on EV/Sales (~36× vs ~22×) on similar absolute revenue, despite WeRide growing faster off the line (+89.6% vs +20%). The premium is justified only by Pony's robotaxi acceleration (+395% Q1) and Toyota JV — i.e., the market is paying up for the option, not the P&L. Against Waymo's ~$126B private mark, Pony at ~$3.7B is a rounding error — the bull's "cheap optionality on a top-3 platform" framing.

Lens 8 · Stock-Price Catalysts (last ~18 months — full public history; IPO'd Nov 2024)

Moves >5% and what drove them:

• Nov 27, 2024 — IPO at $13/ADS ($413.4M gross). The reference price for the whole drawdown.
• May 6, 2025 — Uber global partnership announced → positive catalyst; validated demand-side distribution.
• May 25, 2025 — IPO 180-day lockup expiry → supply overhang; founders countered with a voluntary 540-day extended lockup on all their shares (a deliberate confidence signal).
• Late 2025 — city-wide commercial permits (Shanghai Pudong Jul; Shenzhen citywide Oct; Guangzhou/Shenzhen/Beijing driverless commercial Nov) + HKEX dual-listing Nov 6, 2025 (raised ~HK$6,454.4M / ~$825M net) → fundamental + capital catalysts.
• Q1 2026 (May 2026) — +145% revenue beat, raised guidance → +10% pre-market pop, but faded into the YTD downtrend.
• April 29, 2026 — China nationwide AV-permit freeze (post-Wuhan Baidu cloud-outage incident) → the dominant negative macro/regulatory catalyst of 2026; throttles the fleet-tripling story.
• Net pattern: the stock reacts most to (1) regulatory permit news and (2) fleet/unit-economics milestones — not to the income statement. Revenue beats get sold; permit headlines move it. That tells you the market is trading the policy + scaling option, and the −65%-from-high drawdown is a repricing of regulatory and dilution risk, not a verdict on the tech.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

• Track record (elite): CEO Dr. Jun Peng — co-founded Pony 2016; prior Chief Architect of Baidu's autonomous-driving unit (2011–2016); software engineer at Google/Alphabet (2005–2011, won the Google Founder's Award); Tsinghua BS, Stanford PhD. CTO Dr. Tiancheng Lou — co-founder; ex-Baidu youngest Principal Engineer; ex-Google AD unit; 16-year TopCoder medalist, 2× Google Code Jam world champion; Tsinghua CS PhD. This is a top-tier autonomy founding team — the human-capital case is the strongest single bull point.
• Tenure & skin in the game (strong): both founders since inception (10 yrs). Founders hold ALL Class B shares = 70.0% of voting power (CEO 51.6%, CTO 18.1%) on ~18.7% economic ownership via a 10:1 dual-class. Critically, both signed a voluntary 540-day extended lockup on all their shares from May 2025 — they are not selling.
• Capital allocation: consistent with stage — pour into R&D ($217M FY25) and fleet scaling; raised ~$825M in the HKEX listing + IPO proceeds; parks idle cash conservatively ($872M short-term investments). No buybacks/dividends (appropriate for a cash-burning growth co). The one value-creation signal: the asset-light pivot (third-party fleet owners bear fleet capex) protects the balance sheet. ROE/ROIC are deeply negative (net loss on $1.7B equity) — not yet a capital-allocation story to grade.
• Board quality (credible): independent directors include Jackson Tai (ex-CEO DBS, ex-boards Lilly/HSBC/Mastercard), Dr. Mark Qiu (ex-CFO CNOOC), Asmau Ahmed (ex-Alphabet MD); Toyota's Takeo Hamada sits as a strategic director.
• Red flags (real but disclosed): (1) dual-class entrenchment — minority holders have ~no governance leverage; Cayman "foreign private issuer" status lets Pony skip several Nasdaq governance standards (no majority-independent board required). (2) Related-party revenue (Sinotrans, Lens 10). (3) A historical $2.9M promissory note to the CTO (2018) to cover his equity-award taxes — repaid March 2023; minor and disclosed.
• Archetype: founder-engineer-led, mission-driven, China-frontier — implies long-horizon R&D conviction and willingness to burn for scale, with the governance trade-offs that come with founder control.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Acting as a forensic equity analyst.

1. Related-party revenue concentration — the #1 flag. Sinotrans (China's largest freight logistics, a Pony controlled-JV partner) paid transportation fees to the Cyantron JV of $22.5M / $30.7M / $29.6M in FY23/24/25 — 31.3% / 40.9% / 32.9% of total revenue. A third of revenue is a related party. The robotruck "market traction" is materially a captive relationship; strip it out and external robotruck demand is thin. Watch the trend: the share is falling (40.9%→32.9%) as robotaxi grows — good — but it remains the single biggest accounting-quality concern.
2. Non-GAAP / fair-value flattering of net loss. FY25 net loss "improved" to −$134.0M from −$274.1M almost entirely on a +$128.0M non-cash "change in fair value of trading securities" and $43.0M investment income — not operations (operating loss was −$260.9M and cash burn worsened to −$165.0M). Anyone anchoring on the headline net loss is being misled; the operating engine deteriorated.
3. Cash flow vs earnings divergence: operating cash burn (−$165M) is larger than in prior years despite lower reported net loss — the classic "earnings look better, cash looks worse" tell. Driven by working-capital + fleet investment. Not fraud — but it means the "narrowing loss" narrative is hollow.
4. SBC volatility: FY24 carried a $127M SBC spike (R&D $102.4M + SG&A $24.6M), collapsing to $30.8M in FY25 — large swings distort YoY opex comparability; model on cash, not GAAP opex.
5. VIE/China structure (now unwound but recent): Pony operated via contractual-control former-VIEs until February 2024, when it acquired them as wholly-owned subs — the structure is cleaner than most China ADRs now, but the unwinding is <2.5 years old and the holdco still depends on PRC-subsidiary dividends (subject to PRC capital controls).
6. Going concern: no going-concern doubt — net cash ~$429M + $872M short-term investments give multi-year runway at the current burn (see Lens 11). Internal control over financial reporting attested (large accelerated filer, SOX 404(b)). No restatement; no unrecognized uncertain tax positions.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section):

• SEC Litigation Releases / AAERs: None. "No LR found" and "No AAER found" for Pony.ai over 2021-06-22 → 2026-06-22.
• 10-K/20-F Item 8.A (Legal Proceedings) — company's own disclosure: "We are from time to time subject to various claims, lawsuits and other legal and administrative proceedings arising in the ordinary course of business. However, we do not consider any such claims, lawsuits or proceedings that are currently pending, individually or in the aggregate, to be material…".
• Non-SEC enforcement (web): No material FTC/DOJ/FDA/CFPB action found naming Pony.ai. The salient regulatory event is sector-wide, not company-specific: China's April 29, 2026 nationwide suspension of new AV permits following the March 2026 Wuhan Baidu cloud-outage incident, plus the draft mandatory L3/L4 safety standard (public comment Feb 2026; proposed effect July 1, 2027) that shifts accident liability to manufacturers. This is the live regulatory overhang.
• Net: No material company-specific regulatory or legal findings — verified via SEC EDGAR EFTS (LR, AAER), web search, and 20-F Item 8.A as of 2026-06-22. The risk is industry-policy, not Pony malfeasance.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · Forward Projection

Operating company with no near-term profit — the scoreable variable is revenue trajectory + path to gross-profit scale + cash runway, not EPS (EPS will be negative across the projection window; a positive EPS line would be fabrication). All ``, arithmetic shown, built off FY25 actuals + Q1'26 + management guidance.

Runway first (the question that matters): liquidity ≈ $444.7M cash+investments, net cash ~$429.5M; FY25 operating burn −$165.0M. Even doubling burn to ~$330M/yr for fleet scaling → ~2.5–4 years of runway before a raise — comfortable through the next value-inflection (city-level robotaxi profitability). Runway reaches the catalyst. ✓

Revenue base / bull / bear (FY26E, off FY25 $90.0M):

• Management guide: robotaxi revenue >3.5× FY25 ($16.6M → ~$58M); Q1'26 already $34.3M total (+145%).
• Base: robotaxi ~$58M (3.5×) + robotruck $45M (+10%, Sinotrans-anchored) + licensing/product ~$45M (+37%, ADC ramp) ≈ ~$148M FY26E (+64% YoY). Gross margin creeps to ~18% on Gen-7 BOM cuts.
• Bull: permit freeze lifts H2'26, fleet hits 3,500, robotaxi ~$70M+ → ~$170–190M (+90–110%), GM toward 20%+.
• Bear: permit freeze persists into 2027, fleet stalls near ~2,000, robotaxi only ~2× ($33M), robotruck flat → ~$115–120M (+30%), GM stuck ~15%; the multiple (~36× EV/S) compresses hard toward WeRide's ~22× → 30–40% further de-rating even with growth.
• FY27E directional: if the Gen-7 BOM hits <RMB230K and fleet → 5–8k, robotaxi could be the largest line and total revenue $250–350M — but this assumes the permit regime normalizes under the July-2027 standard. City-level gross-margin breakeven is plausible by FY27; company-level GAAP profitability is not in the projection window (R&D + scaling keep operating losses for years).

Brier forecast (logged conceptually — forecast.ts create SKIPPED per --watchlist rule): the trackable binary would be "PONY FY26 total revenue ≥ $145M, p≈0.60, resolves 2027-04-30" and "China resumes issuing new AV permits nationwide by 2026-12-31, p≈0.55". Not committing these to the tracker in breadth mode.

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. Pony is a genuine top-3 global / top-2-or-3 China robotaxi platform with an elite founder-engineer team, a multi-year permit + 65M-km validation lead, and — newly — demonstrated city-level unit-economics breakeven (Guangzhou Nov'25, Shenzhen Feb'26) with hard proof points (RMB394 peak daily net revenue/vehicle, 25 orders/day). The growth is inflecting violently (robotaxi +395% YoY in Q1'26) just as the Gen-7 cost curve (~70% ADK BOM cut, <RMB230K target) attacks the sector's core profitability bottleneck. It has Toyota as OEM-JV partner + shareholder, Uber for global demand, a net-cash balance sheet (~$429M) that funds the scale-up without imminent dilution, and founders who locked up all their shares for 540 days. At ~$3.7B vs Waymo's ~$126B private mark, it is cheap optionality on autonomy-at-scale. If the permit freeze is temporary and the fleet hits 3,500, the stock re-rates off a washed-out −65% base.

Bear case (2–3 permanent-impairment risks).

1. Regulatory throttle is structural, not transient. The April 2026 nationwide permit freeze + the manufacturer-liability shift in the July-2027 standard could cap China fleet growth for years and raise the cost/insurance burden per vehicle — directly breaking the "triple the fleet" thesis. Robotaxi scale in China is a political variable Pony does not control.
2. A third of revenue is a related party (Sinotrans). External, arms-length demand is thinner than the top line suggests; if Sinotrans renegotiates or the JV unwinds, ~$30M of revenue and the robotruck "traction" story are impaired.
3. Expectations are baked in at a premium multiple (~36× EV/S vs WeRide ~22×) on a 15.7%-gross-margin, −$261M-operating-loss business with accelerating cash burn. Any quarter where the fleet ramp slips or the BOM cuts disappoint compresses the multiple violently — the −40% YTD is the market already doing this.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke): the permit freeze drags into 2027; fleet stalls near 2,000; the robotaxi-revenue "3.5×" guide is cut; a competitor (Baidu's scale, or a Tesla/foreign entrant) triggers a fare price war that pushes city-level economics back below breakeven; the related-party robotruck line shrinks; and a dilutive raise lands at a lower price. Stock halves again to single digits.

Are multiples too high? Yes on a pure-multiple basis vs the nearest comp (WeRide), justified only if you underwrite the robotaxi acceleration surviving the permit freeze. This is an option, not a value, name.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see): the market is pricing PONY as if the April permit freeze is a permanent China-robotaxi ceiling — but China has every industrial-policy incentive to lead global autonomy, the freeze reads as a temporary safety-standardization pause (DSSAD black-box + L4 standard) rather than a retreat, and Pony just proved city-level breakeven — the hardest milestone — right before the drawdown. The crowd is selling the regulatory headline into the exact quarter the unit economics turned. If the permit regime normalizes under the 2027 standard, today's −65% print will look like the bottom.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case.

• Revenue concentration: ~33% is Sinotrans (related party) and another large chunk is lumpy OEM engineering fees; true diversified, arms-length, recurring revenue is small. The "platform" still runs on a captive logistics JV + project work.
• The moat is thinner than bulls think: "first permits + 65M km" is a perishable lead — Baidu's Apollo Go already does 3.2M driverless rides/quarter (+120% YoY) vs Pony's far smaller paid-order base; scale, not first-mover, wins L4 economics, and Baidu is lapping Pony on rides. The most dangerous competitor bulls underestimate is Baidu (domestic scale + capital) — not Waymo.
• Capital-allocation / governance: dual-class gives founders 70% votes on ~19% economics; Cayman FPI status skips Nasdaq governance protections; a third of revenue routes through a related-party JV. Minorities are along for the ride with no leverage.
• Accounting optics: the FY25 "narrowing loss" is a $128M non-cash fair-value gain, while operating cash burn worsened to −$165M. The improvement is cosmetic.
• What must hold for today's ~$3.7B price: (a) China permits resume and the fleet roughly triples; (b) Gen-7 BOM cuts materialize on schedule; (c) fares de-promotionalize without killing ride volume; (d) no dilutive raise near-term; (e) Sinotrans stays. Break any one and the ~36× EV/S is indefensible.
• If growth disappoints 20–30%: FY26 revenue ~$115M instead of ~$148M → multiple compresses toward WeRide's ~22× → 30–45% downside from here even with growth, because the premium is the whole story.
• Single scenario that permanently impairs the business: a serious fatal-accident safety incident in a Pony driverless vehicle during the heightened-scrutiny post-Wuhan permit-freeze window → city permits pulled, manufacturer-liability standard applied retroactively, insurance costs spike, China robotaxi rollout set back years. Plausibility: low-but-non-trivial and exactly what the regulator is now watching for.

Lens 14 · Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. With China's nationwide new-AV-permit freeze (Apr 29, 2026) in effect, what is the concrete path to >3,500 robotaxis by year-end 2026 — which permits are already in hand vs pending, and what is the realistic fleet number if the freeze persists through 2026?
2. Excluding Sinotrans/Cyantron and OEM engineering-solution fees, what was arms-length, third-party, recurring revenue in FY25 — and where does it go in FY26?
3. At what fleet size and fare level does a Gen-7 robotaxi reach full (not city-marginal) unit-economics breakeven including depreciation, insurance, and overhead — and what RMB BOM does that require?
4. Operating cash burn worsened to −$165M in FY25; at the planned fleet ramp, what is FY26–27 burn, and at what cash level do you raise — equity, and at what dilution?
5. The July-2027 mandatory L3/L4 standard shifts accident liability to the manufacturer. Quantify the expected per-vehicle insurance/liability cost increase and who bears it (Pony vs third-party fleet owners vs OEM)?
6. How exclusive, and how revenue-bearing, is the Uber relationship vs WeRide/Baidu also on Uber — what volume have you actually deployed via Uber to date?
7. What is the Toyota/GTMC JV's production commitment in units for 2026–2027, and what are Pony's economics per JV-produced vehicle?
8. Robotruck revenue was flat YoY and is mostly Sinotrans — what is the plan to diversify the logistics customer base, and what is the contracted backlog beyond Sinotrans?
9. Gross margin fell from 23.5% (FY23) to 15.7% (FY25). What is the FY26–27 gross-margin bridge by business line as the mix shifts to robotaxi + product?
10. How much of the $872M short-term + $455M long-term "investments" is truly liquid and available for operations vs strategic/illiquid stakes?
11. What share of robotaxi rides are still fare-discounted/promotional, and what is the trajectory to undiscounted pricing without losing volume?
12. Internationally (Dubai, Zagreb, Singapore, Saudi), what is the regulatory + revenue timeline, and which markets are revenue-generating in 2026 vs pilots?
13. What is the safety record (disengagements/critical events per 1,000 km) for the driverless fleet, and how does the post-Wuhan scrutiny change your validation/deployment cadence?
14. Given the 70% founder voting control and Cayman FPI governance carve-outs, what minority-protection commitments will you make on related-party transactions and future dilution?
15. What is the single milestone in the next 12 months you would stake the equity story on, and what would tell you the thesis is breaking?

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