Guoxuan Hi-Tech and Volkswagen (China) have finally stepped into the "same boat".
On December 12, 2021, Guoxuan Hi-Tech announced that its non-public shares to Volkswagen (China) have completed the registration of new shares and will be listed on December 15. At that time, Volkswagen China officially became the controlling shareholder of Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
The number of shares in the non-public offering is 384 million shares, the price per share is 19.01 yuan, and the funds raised are about 7.3 billion yuan for the new power battery industrialization project, cathode material project and supplementary working capital.
Prior to the offering, Li Jin and his co-actors were currently the actual controllers of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, and Li Jin was also the chairman of Guoxuan Hi-Tech; after the issuance, the proportion of shares held by Volkswagen China in Guoxuan Hi-Tech will increase to 26.47%, becoming the company's largest shareholder. The stake in Guoxuan Hi-Tech held by Li Jin and his co-actors fell to 18.17%, making it the second largest shareholder of the company, as follows:
01 The hearts of the masses
This shot, for the public, may not be a whim.
The replacement of new energy vehicles for fuel vehicles is sooner or later, the internal mechanism of this substitution is mainly reflected in the replacement of fuel engines with power batteries, domestic traditional car companies have long captured this change, and taken measures, such as BYD's battery business earlier than the automobile business, Great Wall Motors later incubated Hive Energy, Geely also established Weirui Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd. to provide battery products for itself.
For Volkswagen, which has a large market, it is too late to invest in lithium-ion power batteries on its own, and it is difficult for elephants to turn around, and Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen, said, "We need to accelerate the reform of Volkswagen's business to avoid becoming another Nokia." ”
Volkswagen aims to sell 1.5 million new energy vehicles per year in China by 2025. Among them, the power battery as the most core component of new energy vehicles, to ensure its supply is the top priority, but how to ensure that the battery supply can keep up with the car production capacity has always been a headache for major automakers, such as even the big catfish Tesla, there have also been incidents because of panasonic battery supply shortage caused by vehicle delivery delays.
In order to ensure the stability of the supply of lithium-ion power batteries, Volkswagen's strategy is to actively establish cooperative relations with a number of downstream battery manufacturers while starting to establish its own power battery factory.
In 2018, Volkswagen conducted long-term cooperation with LG Chem, Samsung SDI, CATL times and other battery manufacturers, and signed orders worth $48 billion. However, due to the sudden epidemic, major battery manufacturers have experienced insufficient capacity supply. Taking the Audi e-tron as an example, in February last year, the news of the suspension of the Audi e-tron caused a heated discussion, and then Audi officially publicly admitted that the reason for the suspension was due to the shortage of power batteries.
At present, Volkswagen's battery suppliers are Sweden's Northvolt, South Korea's SKI, LG Chemical and Samsung SDI, and China's Ningde Era. Volkswagen's batteries for new energy vehicles in China rely almost entirely on catheter times, which are also battery suppliers to Toyota, Hyundai, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and many other competing car companies.
The relationship between Volkswagen and the Ningde era is obviously the heavier right to speak in the Ningde era, and there are many car companies lining up to place orders to the Ningde era, and the Lack of Volkswagen customers in the Ningde era is unscathed, and if Volkswagen loses the supplier of the Ningde era, its production capacity is bound to be fatally damaged.
In order to prevent the above power battery "stuck neck" phenomenon, Volkswagen stepped up the pace of self-built battery factories, Volkswagen clearly stated that the company will build 6 power battery factories with an annual production capacity of 40GWh within 10 years, and it is expected to reach a total production capacity of 240GWh per year in the future.
However, a fatal flaw in the self-built factory is that the time is slow, it is difficult to meet the needs of the public for such a large amount, and it has to adopt the strategy of acquiring battery manufacturers.
First of all, let's take stock of the world's lithium battery companies, the top 10 battery manufacturers in the world in 2020 are: CATL, LG Energy, Panasonic, BYD, Samsung SDI, SKI, AVIC Lithium Battery, Envision AESC, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and EWELL Lithium Energy.
The top five battery manufacturers, for the public can not climb high, volkswagen also has no strength to acquire, can only retreat to the second, AVIC lithium battery and BAIC relationship is ambiguous, it is not convenient to step in, Yiwei lithium energy production capacity is limited, the scale is not large, think about it or Guoxuan hi-tech is more appropriate.
In fact, as early as August 2019, there were media exposures that Volkswagen Group planned to invest in Chinese battery suppliers, and Guoxuan Hi-Tech appeared in its list of potential acquisition targets.
02Why is Guoxuan Hi-Tech
Founded in 2006, Guoxuan Hi-Tech has been in the lithium-ion battery industry for many years and is also a veteran.
From 2018 to 2019, Guoxuan Hi-Tech is the third largest power battery company in China, second only to Ningde Times and BYD; in 2020, due to the increase in the share of LG Chemical supporting domestic Tesla and AVIC lithium batteries, Guoxuan Hi-Tech's market share slipped to fifth, ranking fourth in November 2021, but Guoxuan Hi-Tech is the leader in lithium iron phosphate batteries.
On the level of relationship, in 2017, JIANGHUAI Automobile and Volkswagen Group jointly funded the establishment of JAC Volkswagen, and Guoxuan Hi-Tech is an important battery supplier of JAC New Energy, Guoxuan Hi-Tech has also said to the outside world, "The company has been communicating and communicating with Volkswagen, and the company will strive to enter the world-class vehicle brand supply chain."
JAC Motors is part of Volkswagen's joint venture system in China. In May 2020, Volkswagen announced that Volkswagen China would invest 1 billion euros to acquire a 50% stake in Jianghuai Automobile's parent company, Jiangqi Group, and that Volkswagen China would increase its stake in JAC Volkswagen from 50% to 75% through a capital increase, becoming the controlling shareholder of the latter. In December 2020, the capital increase transaction was completed, and JAC Volkswagen changed its name to Volkswagen Anhui.
It can be seen that Guoxuan Hi-Tech and Volkswagen have long established a certain cooperative relationship in the supply chain.
At the production capacity level, the installed capacity of Guoxuan Hi-Tech in 2020 is 3.32GWh, and the installed capacity in the first three quarters of 2021 is 4.72GWh, an increase of 228% year-on-year, and the installed capacity has exceeded the entire year of the calendar year, and this volume should be enough to meet the "appetite" of the public.
In order to expand production capacity, in 2021, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and Yichun Municipal Government signed a strategic cooperation agreement framework to invest 11.5 billion yuan to establish industrialization projects such as lithium carbonate production and lithium battery supporting materials, and the two phases of the project are planned to be completed within five years.
In terms of foreign strategic cooperation, Guoxuan Hi-Tech is also actively working with the industry, such as recently holding hands with Salt Lake Shares, the two sides signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement, intends to cooperate in new energy, lithium battery, science and technology research and development, lithium magnesium materials, talent training and other fields, to promote the competitiveness of the two sides in the field of new energy industry and rapid business development, the two sides intend to set up a joint venture company, respectively, for the production of lithium iron phosphate and other cathode battery materials and energy storage batteries, in-depth cooperation.
In terms of technology, Guoxuan Hi-Tech focuses on the direction of lithium iron phosphate. Previously, due to the issuance of battery subsidies according to energy density, the development of lithium iron phosphate batteries was limited to a certain extent by ternary batteries. At present, lithium iron phosphate batteries have surpassed ternary batteries, and Guoxuan Hi-Tech's best play happens to be in lithium iron phosphate batteries.
The output data of November 2021 shows that the output of lithium iron phosphate batteries is 17.8GWh, accounting for 63.0% of the total output, an increase of 229.2% year-on-year; the output of ternary batteries is 10.4GWh, accounting for 36.8% of the total output, an increase of 42.6% year-on-year.
According to the loading data of November 2021, the lithium iron phosphate battery loaded a total of 11.6 GWh, and the ternary battery loaded a total of 9.2 GWh.
It can be seen that in terms of output, output growth rate, and loading volume, lithium iron phosphate batteries have exceeded the situation of ternary batteries.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries are more favored by the market because of their cost advantages, and it is precisely lithium iron phosphate batteries that Volkswagen's best-selling models need.
Volkswagen chooses to hold Gaoxuan Hi-Tech, while purchasing batteries from the Ningde era, it can not only provide a double insurance for the stable supply of batteries, but also enable Volkswagen to have more right to speak in cooperation with the Ningde era, killing two birds with one stone.
Author: Hui Ze Lee