Chery, 2022 is a bit big
Photo: Zeng Zhiqi
Edit: Mei Mei
When combing through the sales standards of Chinese brands in 2021, the author found that Chery, which is close to completing the sales target, has issued this year's target at the end of 2021, specifically: 1.5 million vehicles in 2022, striving for 2 million vehicles and an annual operating income of 200 billion yuan; of which 500,000 vehicles are exported.
From January to November 2021, Chery Group sold a total of 850,000 new cars, with an operating income of 130.18 billion yuan, of which 240,000 units were exported overseas. If the sales target of 1 million vehicles can be achieved in 2021, then in 2022, regardless of the annual operating income growth ratio, Chery's cumulative sales need to increase by 50%, of which overseas exports also need to increase by nearly 50%.
What is the concept of 50% growth?
At the end of 2021, China Automobile Cooperation predicted that China's total automobile sales in 2022 would be 27.5 million units, an increase of 5.4% year-on-year. This means that Chery's sales growth in the New Year will almost reach 10 times the industry average. In today's market environment of stock competition, Chery has set such a grand goal, which is really puzzling!
Is it because Chery has gained new endogenous power?
In 2019, in order to solve the problems of liabilities and daily operations, Chery introduced new investors in the form of "capital increase and share expansion", and Qingdao Wudaokou New Energy Automobile Industry Fund Enterprise became Chery's largest shareholder.
In the subsequent 2020, Chery set a sales target of 1 million vehicles and actually completed 730,000 vehicles; in 2021, it set a target of 1 million vehicles, which is expected to be close to completion. Judging from the above data in the past two years, Chery's sales performance does have a slow upward trend (the increase in 2021 should be deducted from the impact of the epidemic on the base in 2020), which may indicate to a certain extent that Chery has come to life after replacing the major shareholder.
However, with reference to the data of the past two years, can changing the major shareholders allow Chery, which has been running for 24 years, to suddenly have the power to soar by 50% in sales and increase by 500,000 vehicles?
Obviously, this is not easy to trust. In fact, even if complex factors such as capital pressure can play a certain effect, Chery wants to complete the goal of 50% sales growth in 2022, which ultimately comes down to its efficient product lineage and explosive products to carry the surge.
So, does Chery have it?
At present, under chery Holdings, there are passenger car brands such as Chery Automobile, Jietu Automobile, Xingtu Automobile, and Kaiyi Automobile. From January to November 2021, Chery Automobile sold 531687 vehicles, Jietu Automobile sold 133942 vehicles, Xingtu sold 32,039 vehicles, Kaiyi sold 16,931 vehicles, in addition to Chery New Energy contributed 64,446 units, Chery Jaguar Land Rover contributed 50,433 vehicles.
Among them, Chery Automobile has 26.78%, 14.74% and 14.23% of its sales contributed by Tiggo 8 series, Tiggo 7 series and Tiggo 5X respectively, which can be called the main sales model.
The above three models or series, all of which are SUVs, cover the market of 70,000-170,000 yuan, which looks quite reasonable. However, looking at the official website, Chery Automobile has actually launched 9 major versions of models in this price range, namely the new generation of Tiggo 5X, Tiggo 5X Superhero Edition, Tiggo 7 PLUS, Tiggo 7 Super Edition, Tiggo 8 Special Edition, the all-new generation Tiggo 8, Tiggo 8 PLUS, Tiggo 8 Kunpeng Edition, and Tiggo 8 PLUS Kunpeng Edition. Under these large versions, Chery Automobile has launched a total of 74 models, of which Tiggo 8 series has a total of 49 models.
In the past January-November 2021, the average annual sales of the above 74 models were about 4,000 vehicles and the average monthly sales were only 364 vehicles; the average annual sales of the above 49 models of the Tiggo 8 series were about 2,900 units and the average monthly sales were only 264 units. Compared with the average annual sales of a single model of Changan CS75PLUS of about 39,300 vehicles and an average monthly sales of about 3,600 vehicles, Chery Automobile's three main sales models or series are really inefficient, not to mention the explosive single products!
In fact, Chery Automobile's complex, varied and inefficient product lineage will also bring great trouble to the production and sales links, because more preparations need to be made in the production process to match the production of various models, and in the sales link, dealers need to do inventory reserves and material reserves of various models, which will lead to rising costs.
In addition, there is also internal friction between Chery Automobile's existing main sales products. For example, the Tiggo 7 series and the Tiggo 8 series have a large overlap in price range. A friend once asked the author how to choose Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8, frankly speaking, the difficulty of answering this friend's question, I even think it is about to catch up with the college entrance examination.
Such an incredible product portfolio is not unique in Chery Automobile, such as the 1.5L powered Arrizo GX (8.59-129,800 yuan), the price range is even higher than the 1.5T powered Arrizo 5 PLUS (6.99-99,900 yuan)! As a result, in January-November 2021, the Arrizo GX sold only 898 units.
Jietu Automobile is a sub-brand of Chery's better performance, but in addition to the Jietu X70 (6.99-15.59 million yuan), which relies on the low-price strategy, other models are not volume models. The high-end Xingtu has used Xingtu TX, Xingtu Chasing Wind, and Xingtu Lingyun to face the competition directly with its own Tiggo 8 series and Tiggo 7 series, compared with Lynk & Co, WEY, brand sales are also far from each other. As for Kaiyi, forget it.
To this end, it can be said that with Chery's existing passenger car products, it is difficult to believe that they can contribute such a large increment in 2022, although their number is really large.
So, who will contribute to Chery's sales increase in 2022?
Some people say that in addition to the small ants, Chery QQ ice cream, because of its direct benchmark competitor Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, annual sales of 400,000 vehicles. As a latecomer, Chery QQ ice cream, even if it is not good, the annual sales level of half of the level to 200,000 is not bad. But can such high sales really be achieved? Not to mention, whether Chery's supply chain system is as efficient as the Wuling supply chain system that can support the explosion at every turn, Chery, known as a technical man, may not be able to open up like Wuling at the marketing level.
Some people also say that in Chery's latest product series, the first model OMODA 5 is worth looking forward to. However, this new car with a shape design similar to Changan UNI-T, when rubbing the concept of the meta-universe, where is the market opportunity point? Will it benchmark Changan UNI's strategy? And how to distinguish it from chery Tiggo series and starway?
Write at the end
The author does not deny the strength and good trend of Chery Automobile, when visiting Chery in the past, the author felt on the ground that Chery is a car company with complete system capabilities, and its independent research and development strength is extremely strong. However, Chery, which sits on technical strength, seems to prefer the game of "having more children and fighting", and does not examine the existing product genealogy, future new product planning and other marketing strategies from the perspective of efficiency. To this end, in the face of soaring sales targets, is Chery really confident of undertaking this 500,000-vehicle increment?