Text/Leju Finance YanMinghui
Among Wang Jianlin's cars, there is a Mercedes-Benz S600 SEL that has followed him for more than 20 years, and the license plate is Liao B88888. Nowadays, this car has been parked in the garage, and Lao Wang travels to sit on the domestic red flag.
On January 8, in sub-zero Beijing, Wang Jianlin took a new car, Hongqi H9, to Fengke Wanda Plaza. As a domestic version of "Rolls-Royce", this car is priced between 309,800 and 539,800.
In all the opening ceremonies of Wanda Plaza this year, only this one is Lao Wang himself appearing on the "platform".
For Wanda, the opening of a single Wanda Plaza is a common thing, after all, there are more than 50 new projects opened in a year; but the reason why Fengke Wanda Plaza is of special significance is that the first Wanda Hongqi Automobile flagship will open for business here, which also marks the beginning of the strategic cooperation between FAW and Wanda.
At the scene, Wang Jianlin, who wears suits and leather shoes, and Chen Xu, general manager of FAW Hongqi's sales, jointly gave the keys of 10 Hongqi cars to 10 car buyers in the store. Lao Wang set up a New Year flag, and this year 60 Wanda Red Flag experience stores will open in various cities across the country.
In the past six months, 67-year-old Wang Jianlin has traveled back and forth between Beijing and Changchun, laying out the car track in an intense manner. First holding hands with FAW, then establishing Wanda Automobile, and recruiting Li Hongpeng, vice president of business of Hyundai Motor Group (China), to join, the eyes of the automotive circle have turned to Wanda.
The difference is that Wanda did not set foot in the industrial chain of "car building", but chose to sell cars.
The reason for this may be related to Lao Wang's personal experience, Wang Jianlin, who has experienced the turmoil of the capital chain in 2017, even if he has walked out of the darkest moment, he will not be better scard and forget the pain, he knows more about the meaning of the word "light loading", "car building" This professional and large investment is handed over to car companies to do.
In the real estate circle, the head housing enterprises with names and surnames have more or less been involved in the automotive industry, some choose to be the gold owners behind them, some cooperate with car companies to create new businesses, some attack the supply chain, and some simply build cars themselves, each with its own way of playing.
But helplessly, in the real estate circle of "car building", whether it is Xu Jiayin or Yao Zhenhua, after investing huge energy and tens of billions of funds, it is still impossible to talk about success.
Not to mention the large investment, risky and long cycle of the automobile industry, even if the competition has reached a white-hot stage, but there are few who can eventually cross the river, and more may drown in the river; even if they barely cross the river, it is also a half-dead state.
Wang Jianlin sells cars
By the end of the year, Wang Jianlin was unusually busy. On the one hand, it is busy with the preparations for Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management to go public in Hong Kong, and on the other hand, it is stepping up the layout of the new energy vehicle field.
Lao Wang first poached a "fierce general" Li Hongpeng from Hyundai Motor in early December last year to serve as the new president of Wanda Automobile.
In the car circle, Li Hongpeng is a marketing veteran with 28 years of experience. Under his leadership, China became the world's largest single market for Mercedes-Benz and established an efficient national distribution network; during his time at Ford, he promoted the integration of Channels such as Changan Ford, Jiangling Ford, and Ford import sales and service, thus forming "One Ford".
Then on December 29, Wang Jianlin established Zhuhai Wanda Zhi Carbon New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. under Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management, the legal representative is Xiao Guangrui, the registered capital is 100 million yuan, and the business scope includes electric vehicle charging infrastructure operation, motor vehicle charging sales, operation efficiency evaluation services, energy-saving management services, etc., which are all light service supporting facilities.
This is not the first time Wanda has been involved in the automotive circle. In 2016, when Dong Mingzhu acquired Yinlong New Energy, he had pulled his old friend Wang Jianlin to increase the capital of this company. After Yinlong New Energy was acquired and renamed "Gree Titanium New Energy", Dalian Wanda Group Co., Ltd. appeared in the shareholder information, holding 3.7313% of the shares.
However, Wang Jianlin really takes the initiative to lay out the automotive field, and it is necessary to start from 2021.
On July 14 last year, FAW Hongqi, Wanda Group and Taiyue Group held the first strategic cooperation talks in Beijing, and the three parties initially reached a cooperation intention; 14 days later, the three parties came to Changchun to visit FAW Hongqi and communicated and negotiated again.
Immediately after that, in August, Wang Jianlin and his party visited China FAW. The signing ceremony of Wanda and China FAW is very simple, but the reception specifications are not simple, And Xu Liuping, chairman of China FAW, and Qiu Xiandong, general manager, personally appeared to receive them. Since then, the marriage of two heavyweight companies has officially begun.
Wang Jianlin, who came from a military background, is known in the industry for his fierce wrists, and the layout of new fields is also the same. In less than two months, China FAW officially announced the launch of strategic cooperation with Wanda Group, and Xu Liuping personally handed over the key of the Hongqi car to Wang Jianlin.
On the same day, Wang Jianlin said, "He personally took the lead, and all senior executives above the vice president of Wanda changed to Hongqi Automobile", which not only expressed trust in domestic brands, but also showed confidence in the national brand Hongqi Automobile.
On November 19 last year, at the Guangzhou International Auto Show, Wanda Zeng Maojun and Chen Xu, general manager of FAW Hongqi Automobile Sales Co., Ltd., jointly released three new rights and interests of "Faqi User Experience Ecology": From the beginning of 2022, new Hongqi car owners can enjoy free movie viewing, free parking, Wanda Hotel Wanyue Club Platinum Card and other preferential policies in various scenes under wanda group.
This is seen by the outside world as an extension of Wanda's services to the automobile industry and the first step in sharing with Hongqi Automobile. To put it simply, the idea of Wanda's entry into the car is that Hongqi Automobile will be sold in Wanda Plaza, and a series of car services will also be provided by Wanda Automobile.
The biggest confidence of Wang Jianlin's cross-border is that there are more than 400 Wanda Plazas in more than 200 cities across Wanda, and the huge channels can extend Wanda's automobile sales network, so that Wanda is successful in the automobile sales and service industry.
In terms of quantity, the number of Wanda Plaza is actually the same as the number of dealers of many medium-sized car companies in China. What's more, Wanda Plaza is often in the core area of urban crowd flow, which has obvious advantages over many 4S stores in the suburbs.
Especially at present, new energy vehicle brands have a special love for shopping malls, and the exhibition halls of shopping malls in first- and second-tier cities have long been the best choice for many new energy brands, not only close distance, good environment, and complete commercial facilities. At present, many wanda plaza parking lots have been installed with new energy charging piles.
Two days after the Guangzhou Auto Show, Wanda Automotive Technology Service Co., Ltd. was established on November 22 with a registered capital of 100 million yuan and the legal representative is Zeng Maojun, whose business scope includes automobile new car sales, auto parts wholesale, motor vehicle charging sales, etc., and has a wholly-owned subsidiary "Beijing Wanda Automotive Technology Service Co., Ltd."
Wanda people said, "The establishment of registered automobile service companies this time is not through the joint venture company to intervene in the automobile production industry chain, but through the laying of automobile sales channels, to prepare for the entry of offline automobile trading services, which is equivalent to an additional distribution channel for automobile companies." ”
In terms of equity, Wanda Automotive Technology Services is owned by Dalian Wanda Group Co., Ltd. and Taiqing (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., each holding 65% and 35%.
The second shareholder, Taiqing Technology, is also an automotive channel company, newly established in October last year with a registered capital of 50 million yuan, and Yue Yue'an, Bao Weijie and Cheng Xiaoying held 80%, 10% and 10% of the shares respectively.
It is worth noting that Yue Yue'an also appeared at the signing ceremony between Wanda and FAW in August last year, he is the chairman and actual controller of Shandong Taiyue Group, and the other identity of Taiyue Group is the majority shareholder of "Taiyue Hongqi", the largest strategic cooperation dealer in the country identified by FAW Hongqi.
It can be seen that Wang Jianlin's cross-border automotive industry not only provides a venue for Hongqi models to display, but also finds professional players with automobile sales backgrounds to cooperate, hoping to have a greater voice in automobile sales.
Curve investment can "eat meat"
It is easy and appropriate to entrust the professional and large investment of "car building" to car companies, and Wanda to do asset-light operations. This kind of "complementary investment" approach is not only thought of by Wanda, such as Sunac, Agile and Hopson Chuangzhan and other housing companies are also trying similar paths.
At the beginning of 2021, Zhutou Intelligent, which is endorsed by the "Hopson System", as a strategic investor, increased its capital by 1.923 billion yuan to GAC Weilai (now known as "Hechuang Automobile"), with which it won more than 66% of the equity of GAC Weilai and officially entered the field of new energy vehicles.
In fact, Zhu Mengyi's car dream was first revealed in July 2019, and Hopson's car rental company ChainChain Good Car, together with GAC New Energy and Yidao Tianxia, jointly held a strategic cooperation signing ceremony. At that time, Hopson said that it planned to invest 10 billion yuan in the field of new energy vehicle sharing.
Coinciding with Zhu Mengyi's "cross-border view", Sun Hongbin also chose not to directly build cars, but to invest in new energy vehicle-related industries. In July last year, Tianjin Runze Property Management and Tianjin Target Yiheng Enterprise Management, a company of "Sunac", held 15.34% and 10.23% of the shares of Chengdu Tronic Energy Storage Technology respectively, with a total investment of 250 million yuan.
According to Leju Finance, Tronmei is an energy storage system supplier, and its business scope includes battery manufacturing, new energy prime mover equipment manufacturing, and new energy vehicle sales.
Regardless of how the outside world advocates the myth of "building cars", Lao Sun has always maintained his sanity for building cars. In the early years, Sunac invested 15 billion yuan in LeTV, and he was not involved in the automotive sector. At that time, in Sun Hongbin's view, "optimistic about LeTV automobile, but the automobile sector is more difficult to understand, did not have time to see, and will look at it later." ”
Fast forward to the end of last year, Agile announced on November 30 that it had invested $140 million in a 4.22% stake in WM Motors. In fact, as early as 2020, WM Motors' 10 billion yuan D round of financing list, Agile is among them. In addition, in 2019, Agile also spent HK$204 million to subscribe for a total of 400 million new shares from Li Century.
Like Agile and Hopson, they choose to invest in potential car companies, do not participate in operation and management, and emphasize financial investment at the equity level, which is safer and more successful, and the financial pressure is far lower than that of personally building cars.
If the car companies that bet on it can really go public smoothly, they can get a piece of the pie, and the money earned is faster than the money from conscientiously building a house and selling a house.
The above housing enterprises are typical representatives of the "complementary investment" automobile field. But the difference is that Wanda joined hands with FAW and focused on "business-oriented investment", Wang Jianlin has not invested real money and silver to invest in FAW, but only in the original supermarket system to create a new car purchase service for car companies.
Personally "car builder"
Grab the car dividend, the housing enterprises play differently. Some real estate tycoons are keen on financial investment, and some bosses prefer to build their own cars and taste the "fast and furious" of the automotive industry. But often the results are not satisfactory, and they also "play dead" themselves.
"I will work as a car in the second half of my life," yao Zhenhua said at a high-level meeting. After withdrawing from the "Baowan dispute", Boss Yao was determined to devote himself to the car-making business, establishing Baoneng Automobile in 2017, followed by the acquisition of 63% of Qoros Automobile's shares in two installments for a total of 8.19 billion yuan, and the acquisition of Changan PSA's DS brand in 2019.
How much did Baoneng spend on building the car?
In September last year, Yao Zhenhua revealed the mystery, "Baoneng has invested more than 50 billion yuan since entering the automotive industry in 2016. "His ultimate flag is to strive to build a world-class new energy automobile enterprise group with strong competitiveness and international influence through 10-15 years."
One of the advantages of Yao Zhenhua's reason for throwing a lot of money and personally building a car is that he can solve the problem of difficulty in getting land and high price of land. Under the background of encouraging the development of the new energy automobile industry in the country, local governments have clearly increased policy support for the new energy automobile industry, especially the support for construction land.
In recent years, Baoneng has won many land projects in various places through the outlet of the car-making base. According to statistics, Baoneng's car-making base and projects cover an area of about 9,000 acres. But at present, as Baoneng falls into a capital chain crisis, the fate of the DS brand and Qoros auto has also taken a sharp turn.
Relevant data show that the sales of the DS brand in the first seven months of 2021 are only 650 vehicles, which is in a precarious situation; after the acquisition of Qoros Automobile, through Baoneng's "left hand to right hand" trick, sales soared by 320% in 2018, and then it has been exhausted. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, Qoros sold only 3,987 vehicles in the first half of 2021.
Optimistic about new energy vehicles, obviously not only Baoneng. Evergrande Xu Jiayin turned to building his own car in early 2019 after breaking up with Jia Accountant, who was "suffocating for his dreams".
Boss Xu abides by the "five mottos" - buy, buy, buy, circle, big, good, in order to integrate car-making resources, in 2019, Evergrande acquired 51% of the equity of the automobile company NEVS for 930 million US dollars, and then successively acquired and invested in a number of upstream and downstream enterprises in the automotive industry chain within a year.
In April 2021, at the Shanghai Auto Show, Evergrande Automobile finally brought nine 1:1 car models and promised to start full production in the fourth quarter of 2021 and start large-scale delivery in 2022.
However, the agreed four quarters have passed, and Evergrande has not yet had a single car listed and sold. At the same time, Evergrande Automobile is also in a deep dilemma, because the parent company thunderstorm, and part of its equity has also been put on the "shelf".
Cornered, Xu Jiayin announced that Evergrande would realize the transformation from the real estate industry to the new energy automobile industry within 10 years.
If Evergrande can be reborn and completely become a new energy vehicle-based company, it will become the first housing enterprise to transform from selling houses to selling cars. However, judging from the current situation that Evergrande is mired in a debt of 2 trillion yuan, the chances of success in this transformation are minimal.
Developers have money, which is the advantage of their car building. However, compared with real estate, the return cycle of the automobile industry is longer, and more scientific research funds need to be invested, and Li Bin, founder of Weilai Automobile, and He Xiaopeng, founder of Xiaopeng Automobile, have lamented how much money is burned to build cars.
A founder of a new energy vehicle company also said that two or three billion investment in car manufacturing can only be heard. Evergrande Automobile invested 47 billion yuan, during which it once won a peak market value of 460 billion Hong Kong dollars, and now, the market value is only 42 billion yuan, which is less than the total investment before.
Therefore, for rich real estate developers, money does not seem to be a problem. The key to their failure is not that they don't have enough resources or money, but rather that they have too much money and don't know how to make it on the cutting edge.
In a sense, the attempt to control a new car-making company that relies on fine technology is doomed to failure in the way of thinking of housing enterprises "buying, buying, buying, and cooperating" in a big way of thinking. Moreover, the heavy financial pressure brought about by the next car building will in turn drag down the cash flow of the main business of real estate, and finally it can only be empty.
Forced to choose "exit"
Six years ago, it was the most popular year for cross-border cars in housing enterprises. In 2015, Greenland invested 1.55 billion yuan in Rundong Automobile, holding 30% of the shares and becoming the controlling shareholder. Unexpectedly, a year later, Greenland cashed out in time.
Also in this year, Vanke tested the water unmanned vehicle, which was tried in Shanghai, Dongguan and other parks. It is understood that this unmanned vehicle is developed by Vanke in cooperation with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, this car has no steering wheel, and the vehicle relies on the road map preset in advance on the on-board computer.
But for car building, Yu Liang always has a clear understanding, "I think of course we will not build cars, we will 'plant land', our most important task is to do a good job of 'farmers' and grow 'grain'."
In addition, a small transparent housing enterprise Guancheng Chase also laid out the power battery in 2015, established Guancheng Ruimin, and insisted on it for six years. Recently. With the hot new energy vehicle market, many lithium battery companies have too many orders to receive, in such a prosperous environment in the industry, Guancheng Ruimin is facing closure because there is no order.
According to the incomplete statistics of Leju Finance, since Greenland Group acquired Rundong Automobile in 2015, more than 10 real estate developers have entered the automotive circle in the past 6 years. The scope of "involvement" of these real estate developers in the automobile industry is mainly: vehicle manufacturing, power batteries, new energy industry bases/industrial parks and automobile dealer channels.
In the early years, housing enterprises focused on automobile industrial parks, and the representative of this model is Country Garden's Shunde New Energy Automobile Town. In 2017, Country Garden signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Shenzhen New Energy Automobile Industry Association, the only one in China covering the entire industrial chain of new energy vehicles; in January 2018, Country Garden launched Shunde New Energy Automobile Town.
However, as the car track becomes more and more crowded and more and more professional players are needed, some housing companies can only be forced to choose to leave.
Huaxia Happiness reached a strategic cooperation with Guangdong Mengshi New Energy, which mainly sells batteries, in 2016; in early 2017, Wang Wenwen, chairman of Huaxia Happiness, personally subscribed to invest 330 million yuan to acquire nearly 53.4% of the shares of United Automobile (the parent company of Nezha Automobile), becoming the new chairman of United Automobile.
After holding Hezhong Automobile, Wang Wenwen announced that he would invest 40 billion yuan to build a large travel business. However, only a year later, Huaxia Happiness quickly withdrew from United New Energy, and perhaps Wang Wenwen at that time did not believe that the current Nezha car could sell more than 10,000 vehicles a month.
Not only has Boss Wang's vigorous "car-making dream" been shattered, but today's Happiness in China is just as shaky as Evergrande.
Daimyo city chose to lay out the power battery. First, in 2016, Shanghai Mingheng New Energy Technology was established with a registered capital of 500 million yuan, and later a new energy vehicle subsidiary was established in Taizhou, and invested in the construction of the first new energy automobile industrial park and new energy automobile research institute.
However, after that, there is no news of the company's development in the new energy industry on the rivers and lakes, and it is suspected of "retreat".
Like Damingcheng, another Beipai housing company also has a fancy to power batteries. In 2018, Wantong Real Estate intends to acquire 78.3% of the equity of Xingheng Power Co., Ltd. for 3.17 billion yuan. However, the acquisition of Xingheng Power supply of 3.17 billion yuan is almost the same as the operating income of Wantong Real Estate in 2017. After 5 months of planning, the housing company still took the initiative to withdraw.
In 2019, R&F joined hands with Huatai Automobile. However, this combination, from the beginning was not optimistic about the outside world, once jokingly called "negative and negative union", revenue and debt problems are very serious; after the two sides announced that they held hands for 47 days, R&F Real Estate and Huatai Automobile terminated cooperation in new energy and unmanned driving.
At the 2019 interim results meeting, Li Silian said that all cooperation with Huatai Automobile has been suspended, and before that, the two sides were only a cooperation intention, and did not involve due diligence and other links, let alone a shareholding, and R&F did not enter the automotive industry.
These lessons show that although the cash flow of housing enterprises is abundant, in the face of the "bottomless pit" of car manufacturing, if they cannot find the right direction, they will eventually be fruitless, or even be eaten back.
Article Source: Deep News