The suspense is solved, and the variables fall to the ground.
On December 15, Guoxuan Hi-Tech issued non-public shares to Volkswagen (China) Investment Co., Ltd., completed the registration of new shares and officially listed.
After the completion of the non-public offering, the number of shares held by Volkswagen China Investment in Guoxuan Hi-Tech increased to 441 million shares, and the shareholding ratio increased to 26.47%, becoming the largest shareholder of Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
At this point, the dust has settled.
Paradoxically, Volkswagen China chose to "hold shares and not hold rights", which is a noteworthy detail.
Volkswagen China promised that the actual controller of Guoxuan Hi-Tech is still Li Jian, chairman of Guoxuan Hi-Tech. In fact, the equity of Guoxuan Hi-Tech held by Li Jin and his co-actors has dropped to 18.17%, making it the second largest shareholder of Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
Since it has become the largest shareholder of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, why do you still have to "hold shares without holding rights", and what drugs are sold in the Volkswagen gourd?
Photo combination
The particularity of the new energy era is that the fuel giant Volkswagen has temporarily lost the dominance of battery supply.
On the one hand, the wind direction of new energy in automobiles is turning too fast, on the other hand, Volkswagen has insufficient foundation in the new energy industry chain, and the factors of the two aspects are superimposed, making Volkswagen at this stage particularly passive in battery supply.
If you want to build electric vehicles, you must have a battery supply chain, and if you want to have a battery supply chain, Volkswagen is bound to cooperate with battery manufacturers at present.
Of course, for a behemoth like Volkswagen, Rome was not built in a day, and the battery supply chain was not built in the short term.
In the short term, the public must rely on external forces, that is, to form strategic cooperation with a number of large battery manufacturers, which is the law.
In the medium term, Volkswagen needs to participate in battery companies to form a community of interests, which is the middle of the law.
In the long run, controlling a technologically advanced battery factory and building a strong and reliable R&D and supply chain according to its own will is the ultimate goal of volkswagen, and this is the best way to go.
Of course, these three paths do not necessarily have to be in chronological order, and the more efficient approach is that the three routes are carried out in parallel, and this version should be more in line with the public's battery layout strategy.
In fact, Volkswagen does the same. One of the public layouts is Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
I have to say that Guoxuan Hi-Tech occupies the second camp of battery dealers do not have the time, place and people.
Tianshi is Volkswagen's urgent new energy transformation strategy, the geographical advantage is Volkswagen's shareholding in Jianghuai, Guoxuan Hi-Tech Hefei Company and Anhui Volkswagen live next to each other, and people are the matchmaking of Hefei City.
Just like a marriage, the two parties are just right in age, and they happen to have enthusiastic matchmakers, everything is so logical and natural.
Mind
However, for the public at that time, Guoxuan Hi-Tech was only a sub-optimal choice, and Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt was the focus of Volkswagen.
According to the data, Northvolt was founded in 2017 by former Tesla executive Peter Carlson, and the company has almost received "green light" support from the European political and business circles in less than 5 years of development.
Although there is no only Northvolt lithium battery start-up from Europe, the choice of industry giants and capital has established Northvolt's position as a leader.
For Volkswagen, Northvolt is the hope of Europe's homegrown battery industry. Both strategically and morally, it is the responsibility to support Northvolt to become stronger and bigger.
In 2019, Volkswagen invested 900 million euros in Northvolt, acquiring a 20% stake in it and a seat on the company's board of directors, and the two also jointly established a joint venture battery factory with a 50% stake each.
The honeymoon period ended quickly.
Last June, Volkswagen said it would invest a further $620 million in Northvolt to secure battery capacity for its electric vehicles.
Volkswagen hopes to take a stake in Northvolt while holding a stake in a joint-venture battery factory with a previous 55%share ratio, such as a 75% shareholding ratio.
Although Volkswagen's covetousness was revealed, Northvolt eventually transferred all 50% of the shares in the joint venture factory to Volkswagen.
The reason is very simple, the main customer of this battery joint venture factory is Volkswagen, and future sales and orders are in the hands of Volkswagen, which is the most advantageous place for Volkswagen.
Once the two sides get into a tug-of-war over equity, it will put Northvolt in an awkward position — losing battery orders and offending the wealthy public who still has a 20% stake in the company.
Making this choice would also be wise for Northvolt.
In March, Northvolt received a 10-year, more than $14 billion battery order from Germany's Volkswagen AG, which was seen as Volkswagen's compensation for Northvolt's relinquishment of its stake in the joint venture plant.
As for Northvolt, it is not idle, it does not want to put all its eggs in the public basket.
In addition to Volkswagen, Northvolt and Volvo are also playing hot.
In June, the company announced plans to establish a battery joint venture, which includes the establishment of a giant factory and research and development center for production.
A Northvolt that shows independence and self-determination is not a good thing for the public, so the importance of Guoxuan Hi-Tech is further reflected.
Positive
Although in the second camp, Guoxuan Hi-Tech is not a small role in the battery industry.
Guoxuan's high-tech technology is not inferior to the Ningde era, the speed of production capacity construction is amazing, the market value growth space is huge, and the advantages of appropriate volume make the public make up their minds.
In May last year, before and after the negotiations between Volkswagen and Northvolt on the equity of the joint venture battery factory, Guoxuan Hi-Tech issued a private placement of A-share shares to The Volkswagen Group through the 2020 non-public issuance of A-share shares, and the number of shares issued was 30% of the total number of shares of Guoxuan Hi-Tech before the issuance.
In March this year, Guoxuan announced that it received the "Letter on Preparing for the Meeting of the Non-public Issuance and Review Committee of Guoxuan Hi-Tech Co., Ltd.", which means that the matter of the public marriage with Guoxuan has become a foregone conclusion.
Subsequently, the relationship between the two sides heated up rapidly.
From May to July this year, Volkswagen sent three teams to Guoxuan Hi-Tech to help Guoxuan Hi-Tech upgrade from several aspects such as management, technology and after-sales service.
On July 12, the two sides also signed a memorandum of understanding on a strategic cooperative relationship for batteries. As of October, Volkswagen has formed a working team of more than 100 people in Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
The changes in Guoxuan Hi-Tech are also obvious.
Previously, Guoxuan Hi-Tech's 2025 production capacity target was 100GWH, and after Volkswagen settled in, the capacity plan was adjusted to 100Gwh in 2023 and 200-300Gwh in 2025.
What actively echoes the goal is Guoxuan Hi-Tech's continuous expansion of battery production capacity.
With the help of Volkswagen's springboard, Guoxuan Hi-Tech inserted wings to fly to Europe.
In July this year, Guoxuan Hi-Tech acquired Bosch Group's plant in Göttingen, Germany, to establish Guoxuan Hi-Tech's first new energy production and operation base in Europe, with a production capacity of 3.5Gwh in the first phase, which is scheduled to be supplied in 2023.
At the same time, Hefei New Station, Nanjing Liuhe, and Guoxuan Hi-Tech have respectively established 20Gwh VW standard battery cell projects, which plan to supply to the public in 2023.
Subsequently, production bases including Yichun and Liuzhou have been built, and basically guaranteed to be put into operation around 2023.
As for why Guoxuan Hi-Tech will "hold shares and not hold rights", a very important reason is that the public needs to ensure the stable transition of Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
It is expected that by 2025, Volkswagen's annual battery demand in Europe and Asia will exceed 150Gwh, and looking at Guoxuan Hi-Tech's production capacity plan, Volkswagen's battery reserves have no near worries.
A stable Guoxuan Hi-Tech is more in line with the medium- and long-term interests of the public.
If the competition for the right to speak affects the promotion of Volkswagen's battery strategy, then Volkswagen is likely to lose the new energy competition with Tesla and Chinese car companies.
way out
What's more, there are still many things that the public needs to do at the moment, which is related to whether the public can digest the battery production capacity that has been planned.
By 2026, Volkswagen will launch pure electric vehicles based on pure electric, fully interconnected SSP scalable system platform to completely solve the current problems of meB, PPE, SPE and other pure electric platforms are incompatible with each other and run out of control.
VW.OS, volkswagen's distinctive operating system, is not perfect, and by 2025, Volkswagen will invest 27 billion euros in digitalization, increasing the proportion of investment in software development from the current 10% to 60%.
The problem of chip shortages remains, said Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert? Diess recently revealed that Volkswagen plans to independently design and develop high-performance chips and required software.
The bigger challenge is that volkswagen ID.'s current global market development is uneven. The performance of the European market is far better than that of the Chinese market, and the performance of the Chinese market is related to the success or failure of Volkswagen's new energy strategy.
The future of Volkswagen in China is not only the market, but also the core technology.
To some extent, the success or failure of Guoxuan Hi-Tech also deeply determines the independence and cost control ability of Volkswagen's new energy transformation in the industrial chain.
Therefore, in the face of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, the public is bound to be cautious.
From Guoxuan Hi-Tech, what we see is not stubborn, rigid Germans and German companies, but a global auto giant with pattern and wisdom, which should also be the most awesome place for Germans - they put down the arrogance of the era of fuel vehicles and came up with the modesty and caution of the new energy era.
In time, the biggest opponent of Chinese brands on the road forward is probably from Wolfsburg.