As one of the new car-making forces, behind the seemingly glamorous performance of Nio Automobile (NYSE: NIO), hidden worries cannot be ignored.
According to the third quarter report of 2021, NIO delivered a total of 24,439 NIO ES8, ES6 and EC6 models in the third quarter, an increase of 100.2% year-on-year.
However, recently, the well-known douyin up master "Little Nonsense Car" has aroused heated discussion about the fact that the Weilai ES8 battery life evaluation found that the mileage is false. Weilai car users have also questioned the problem.
Under the trend of Weilai Automobile's rapid expansion of delivery, the quality problems of its vehicles occur from time to time; At the same time, the company still faces problems such as performance losses, difficulty in improving gross margins, and blocked deliveries.
The market is fiercely competitive and the sales are under pressure
At the beginning of 2021, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of WEIO, had formulated a plan to sell 100,000 vehicles a year. Tian Yongchun, a commentator on the automotive industry, believes that this data can open the door to the scale effect of WEILAI automobiles, and the increase in delivery volume is undoubtedly crucial to the ability to make profits. However, this plan seems to be difficult to achieve due to the frequent car accidents and chip shortages of WEILai Automobile.
According to the third quarterly report of Nio Automobile, the company delivered a total of 24,439 models ES8, ES6 and EC6 in the third quarter of 2021, an increase of 100.2% year-on-year. From a single month point of view, the delivery volume of NIO in October 2021 was only 3667 units, a sharp decline of 65.5% from September.
It is worth noting that in July and August this year, Weilai Automobile had two serious accidents. Among them, Mr. Lin Wenqin, the founder of Shangshan Ruoshui Investment Management Company, was involved in a car accident driving a Weilai car on the road, and after investigation, it was shown that it was an accident after the automatic driving function (NOP pilot state) was enabled. This pushed Weilai Automobile to the cusp of the storm, directly affecting car sales in the next few months. Although NIO stepped up its catch-up in November and delivered 10,878 vehicles, it has sold 80,940 vehicles so far, still some distance from the "small target" of 100,000 vehicles.
Such a large sales pressure can also be seen that the delivery bottleneck of Weilai Automobile is not only caused by the chip supply problem mentioned by Weilai Automobile, but also affected by many factors such as market competition and user loss.
In contrast, Xiaopeng Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaopeng Automobile", XPEV. N) Deliveries reached 2.52 units in the third quarter of this year, a quarterly high of 199.2% year-on-year. Ideal Cars (2015.HK) ranked first with 25,700 deliveries, and NIO fell all the way from the first in the previous quarter to the third. The gap in delivery volume between the three new car-making forces is already very close, which also makes the sales market become increasingly competitive.
Previously, when new energy vehicle companies were slashing prices to grab market share, Li Bin said at an annual meeting in December 2020 that Weilai Automobile "resolutely does not reduce prices". Li Bin also said in the interview, "The price of a penny is a penny, and the price of eating tuna is definitely different from eating crucian carp." ”
Today, NIO has launched a car purchase subsidy program for individual users: users who pay a deposit to purchase ES8, ES6 and EC6 before December 31, 2021, and who pre-market on March 31, 2022, can enjoy subsidies ranging from 16,200 yuan to 18,000 yuan. From this point of view, the sales price of Weilai Automobile has indeed not declined, and it also occupies an advantage in the price war.
At present, Weilai Automobile is facing the competition of the three major enterprises in the head, as well as the catch-up of the rising rookies, and the pressure of Li Bin is self-evident. More importantly, in such a dilemma, Weilai Automobile still has not escaped the life and death line of loss.
The composition of NIO's operating income in the first three quarters
Still not free from the problem of loss
Due to the increase in vehicle deliveries in the third quarter, NIO's total revenue in the third quarter reached 9.805 billion yuan, an increase of 116.6% year-on-year and 16.1% quarter-on-quarter. Among them, automobile sales revenue grew rapidly to 8.6368 billion yuan, an increase of 102.4% year-on-year and 9.2% month-on-month. The revenue of Ideal Automobile and Xiaopeng Automobile was 7.78 billion yuan and 5.72 billion yuan respectively. In the case of sales of each other, Weilai Automobile has greatly widened the difference in revenue data at a price of about 430,000 yuan per vehicle on average.
It is worth noting that in the third quarter of 2021, OTHER sales revenue of NIO reached 1.1685 billion yuan, an increase of 350.8% year-on-year. Among them, the revenue from the sale of new energy vehicle credits exceeded 500 million yuan. In the first three quarters, WEILAI Automobile sold a total of about 200,000 new energy positive integrals, with an average sales price of about 2,500 yuan.
However, although Weilai Automobile ranked first in terms of revenue, its net profit performance was not satisfactory. According to the financial report, WEIO's net loss in the third quarter of this year was 835 million yuan, and Xiaopeng Automobile's net loss was 1.595 billion yuan; The net loss of ideal cars was 21.5 million yuan.
According to the data disclosure, the sales cost of WEIO in the third quarter of this year expanded to 7.812 billion yuan, a substantial increase of nearly 1 times compared with the same period last year, and an increase of 13.6% over the second quarter of the previous year, which may be one of the important reasons for the expansion of WEILAI Automobile's losses. According to the number of 24,439 ES8, ES6 and EC6 vehicles delivered by Weilai Automobile in the quarter, the average sales cost of each car sold was as high as more than 300,000 yuan.
In addition, WEILAI's research and development expenses are also high, and its third-quarter financial report shows that its research expenses are 1.193 billion yuan, and the cumulative investment year-to-date has reached 2.763 billion yuan. In its 2020 annual report, NIO expected to invest a total of 5 billion yuan in research and development in 2021, which means that the company may continue to increase investment in research and development in the fourth quarter.
Nio's stock price performance fluctuated like a roller coaster, closing at $30.79 per share on December 15, 2021, compared with the high of $67 per share in January this year.
For investors in the secondary market, the near-standard number of NIO's deliveries is not an ideal answer. Ye Huaqiang, a financial commentator, said that the delivery volume is only one of the many data indicators of stock price valuation, and the company's fundamentals have not improved the valuation center, so it is reasonable that the stock price is difficult to support at a high level. It is worth noting that from the long-term trend, Weilai Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile have not diverged much in stock prices, and their performance is relatively consistent.
Mileage vanity storm continues
Judging from the third quarterly report, Weilai Automobile's cash reserves are still 47 billion yuan. How to 'burn' the money worth it is a problem that Li Bin and the management need to think about.
However, product quality issues may be more worrying for management at the moment. Recently, the well-known douyin up master "Little Nonsense Car" has attracted heated discussion on the extreme mileage evaluation of Weilai Automobile ES8. In the video, the dark night, the long high speed and the falling power let the audience also experience the whole process of "mileage anxiety". At the end of the video, the audience can clearly see that the original table shows the mileage of 384 kilometers, but finally when it runs to more than 220 kilometers, it prompts the power consumption to run out. This seems to be very different from the "610km ultra-long endurance, no mileage anxiety" mentioned in the advertisement of Weilai Automobile.
How much trouble can the virtual endurance of electric vehicles cause? For users who buy new energy vehicles, there are two points of general concern about the endurance issue, one is the actual total endurance, which is used to judge whether the vehicle can be applied to a longer-distance journey; The second is how long the remaining power can last, so that you can judge whether to find a charging pile or change the power station in time to avoid helpless towing. When battery life becomes one of the criteria for users to measure, the virtual endurance standard seems to have become a bitter medicine for all new energy vehicle companies to increase sales.
In addition, Weilai Automobile's new car was also exposed to quality problems, and on the Weilai APP, Weilai Automobile was accused of being broken on the accelerator. Under the original post, some Weilai staff replied, "The communication of the service group is to scrape the shoes when getting off the bus, it is indeed the first time to encounter such a problem, and colleagues have gone to the service center to understand the situation." The specific situation will be resolved properly. "Investor Network" contacted Weilai Automobile on related quality issues, and has not yet received a reply, and will continue to pay attention to it in the future.
Since its development, the new energy automobile industry has always been a coexistence of opportunities and challenges. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the national production and sales of new energy vehicles in the first half of the year were 1.215 million units and 1.206 million units, respectively, an increase of 215% year-on-year. Among the main varieties of new energy vehicles, the output and sales of pure electric vehicles reached 1.022 million units and 1.005 million units, respectively, an increase of 230% and 220% year-on-year, respectively.
Faced with delivery bottlenecks, loss dilemmas and user complaints, WEILAI Automobile still has a difficult road ahead if it wants to gain more market share.