Image source @ Visual China
Text | Market capitalization list, author | He Yueyang, editor| Jiaxin
Wen Wei set off a big storm in the automotive circle.
As the founder of Tuanche Network, Wen Wei recently revealed to the media that the company has joined the army of new car-making forces. In Wen Wei's mouth, the car-making team of Tuanche has experience, technology, efficiency, and can do almost everything.
Li, the CEO of Ideal Cars, couldn't look at it anymore. On the evening of January 16, he publicly choked on Weibo, to the effect that such a "superman team" is most likely a liar, and the high probability of finding a "superman team" is also a liar. Li Xiang even expressed his attitude with words such as "no shame" and "refreshed the bottom line of entrepreneurs".
The next morning, Wen Wei also fought back fiercely, telling Li not to think of himself as a prophet.
Both the deceiver and the prophet must be based on facts. So, what superpowers does Wenwei's car-making team have? What is the origin of Wen Wei and his group car? Is there enough money to build a car, a group car?
01 Project: Perfect Unreal
What kind of car-making team and planning makes Li want to be tempted to "make a big mouth"?
What is needed to build new energy vehicles? It needs people, money, technology, and in the current situation of lack of core and lithium, it also needs strong bargaining power.
What are the group cars? There is an alien team of more than 100 people. Although from the decision to build a car to now, the time is only a few months, not enough for Wen Wei to think clearly about many problems, he does not know how to do brand positioning, brand concept, but because of such an external team, he is very determined, the group car to build a car.
Is this team experienced?
In Wen Wei's mouth, this is a team with twenty years of seniority, from less than 50,000 to more than 20 million, from commercial vehicles to logistics vehicles, can do.
Does this team have any technology?
Wen Wei described that this team can undertake product planning, styling design, engineering development, testing, chassis, three electrics, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, systematic integration program, production support, supplier management and almost all car manufacturing processes.
Not only that, but the team has also made solar and hydrogen powered vehicles.
Does this team have an efficiency advantage?
In Wen Wei's eyes, it is almost top-notch, he said, in the era of fuel vehicles, the car manufacturing cycle of international manufacturers is 48 months, the domestic car-making new forces have achieved 36 months, and the team of tuanche can now do 18-24 months.
This makes Wen Wei very confident, "It doesn't matter if our first car fails, we can do another one in 3 months" "I think there is at least a 50% chance of winning."
Wen Wei said that this foreign team came directly with semi-finished models. The first car will also choose one from the semi-finished models, using mature programs, mature technologies, mature suppliers, and the quality and quality control of the product itself are fully mature and controllable.
He expects that in 2022, the golden nine silver ten will be sold, priced at 100,000 yuan - 200,000 yuan.
To build a car, is there money for the group car?
I don't know yet, but they have the ability to save money. The cost of mass production of a car is only about $50 million. More than 300 million will produce a new energy vehicle, which makes those new energy vehicles that have only begun to start with tens of billions of investments.
In this way, this team has precipitation in technology and sample cars, and the car manufacturing cycle is significantly faster than that of international fuel vehicle companies, and it can also hang the first echelon of domestic new energy vehicle manufacturing. If that's true, the team is invincible. This configuration, this project, Wang Duoyu looked at it and said good.
As the saying goes, fengqi sycamore. If you want to attract a phoenix, you have to be a plane tree. What does this so-called top team fancy about the group car?
02 Tuanche: Is it a plane tree?
Wen Wei is a serial entrepreneur. After graduating from a foreign trade major, he entered Shanghai Mitsubishi Electric to engage in channel sales. In 2000, he started his own business.
Tuanche is his fifth venture. Inspiration comes from the fact that in a QQ group, some people led the group to go to the 4S store to bargain for a car, that is, a large and high-priced group purchase.
In 2010, Tuanche started the group purchase convenience service, through online channels, gathered consumers interested in buying the same brand and model, and organized them to go to offline dealerships to buy. After accumulating the operational ability to organize offline activities, in 2016, Tuanche launched the auto show business.
In 2018, Tuanche was successfully listed on the NASDAQ and was known as the "first share of automotive new retail".
The business is mainly divided into two aspects: offline marketing services and virtual dealers:
1. Offline marketing is the auto show and group purchase, the group car plays the role of drainage, and the income is the entrance fee of the auto show and the service fee of the promotional activities;
2, virtual dealers, usually, the group car will represent the secondary dealers (dealers who can sell a variety of brands) from the car manufacturer or franchise dealer to buy cars, participate in the transaction, charge commissions to the secondary dealers, generally related to the cost of the car;
Although Tuanche attaches great importance to the business of virtual dealers and believes that it is a sharp tool for operation, the main income of Tuanche still comes from the offline auto show business, and in 2019, virtual operation + online marketing accounted for just over 3% of the overall revenue.
In 2020, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, offline gathering activities were restricted, and the auto show revenue of tuanche fell by nearly 60%, which was the direct culprit of income slashing.
The situation of group cars in 2021 is not very optimistic, the first three quarters of the offline auto show business revenue of 190 million yuan, the fourth quarter of previous years is the peak season, even if it is the same as the first three quarters of revenue, this part of the annual revenue is also lower than 2019. Virtual resellers and online marketing are gaining momentum, accounting for 30% of revenue.
Even if there is no new crown epidemic, subject to weak sales of new cars, and new energy vehicles are more inclined to build their own sales networks, the offline sales business of tuanche may also encounter a scale bottleneck, and the new crown only accelerates this process.
From the perspective of profits, because the group car is engaged in the business of drainage or middlemen, and the service fee and commission are charged, the gross profit margin is higher, more than 70%, under such a high gross profit margin, from the public data of the group car, it has not been able to achieve profitability.
The reason is that under the original business model, Tuanche needs to grasp a large number of relatively accurate car purchase intention customers in order to attract car manufacturers or franchisees, hold exhibitions, or get lower prices to form their own competitiveness.
To this end, tuanche pays a high amount of marketing costs, such as advertising, promotion costs and salaries of sales staff. Sales expense ratio exceeds gross profit margin often occurs, losses become the norm of group cars, and because in the virtual distribution business, it needs to advance funds, and the cash flow from operating activities is also a state of net outflow all year round.
There is neither profit nor independent hematopoietic ability, superimposed on the factors of the general environment, and it is not too much to say that the business model cannot run.
After the listing, the group car fell badly, and encountered the impact of the epidemic, the group car was snubbed in the US stock market, and the turnover rate of 0% was not an uncommon thing.
The regiment car urgently needed a life-saving straw.
03 Ammunition: Only 130 million on the account
Wen Wei or tuan che, from marketing to automobile manufacturing, are all cross-border.
Production and sales are two kinds of learning, especially in the automobile industry with a very long production chain, cross-border, is not an easy task.
A relatively mysterious team, the outside world can not evaluate its real technical level and industry status, but you can see the degree of reliability of cross-border from the "money".
First, how much does it cost to manufacture new energy vehicles?
Manufacturing, is a heavy asset work, the need for a lot of funds to lay the foundation, mass production of a car may not need tens of billions of funds, but the follow-up also faces no orders, or small order volume, bringing about the production of a loss of a dilemma. Wei Xiaoli has reached the level of delivering about 100,000 vehicles a year, and still can't get rid of losses.
The road that Wei Xiaoli waded through, the enlightenment to future generations was that they did not have money to come in.
Baidu and Geely jointly founded Jidu, in 2021 joined the car-making industry, CEO Xia Yiping said that Jidu invested 50 billion yuan in 5 years; Lei Jun personally led the team, the first phase of investment of 10 billion yuan; Weilai founder Li Bin once said that 20 billion yuan is the lowest threshold for car manufacturing, and then said that if the capital reserve is not 40 billion yuan, the possibility of failure of new energy vehicles will be much higher.
Second, how much money does the group car have?
As mentioned above, the group car is a loss for many years and has no hematopoietic capacity, and the books are not rich. As of September 30, 2021, the total amount of cash, cash equivalents and restricted deposits of Tuanche was $134 million.
Compared with the sincerity of the top team to come up with the finished car, the 134 million yuan of the group car can play a limited role in the process of cooperation or merger into a team.
For example, in the original asset-light model, the property plant equipment assets of the group car are very small, only 4.24 million yuan, which cannot provide a ready-made site for the production of the car-making team.
In fact, the total assets of the group car are 396 million yuan, of which 115 million yuan is a relatively virtual asset - goodwill, even if the group car is sold, it can not make up for the funds needed for new energy vehicle manufacturing.
When mentioning why the two sides can come together, Wen Wei said that the team has a reverence for building cars, and its own group car has a reverence for selling cars, which may be the only group car that can get its hands on.
Third, where does the money come from?
There is no money for the group car, but the problem of money must always be solved.
Wen Wei said that Tuanche itself is a U.S. listed company, and there are many investors who are very interested at present, and the desire of local governments for car-making projects can also become one of the solutions.
To sum up, it is secondary market financing, finding investors and taking money from the government or taking low prices.
Secondary market financing may also be one of the reasons why Tuanche withdrew privatization. However, as of January 17, 2022, the total market value of Tuanche is 55.8 million US dollars, such a low market value, the scale of financing will be very limited.
Is it feasible to refinance after inflating valuations?
After the positive release of the car, the stock price of the group car is indifferent, and even downward, which basically shows that the stimulation of the news surface has no effect. In addition, U.S. stock investors have little sympathy for companies that have refinanced from the market.
Look again, find investors and find the government.
This path, when Jia Yueting was preparing for a comeback last year, also thought about it this way, but it did not succeed later. Will Wen Wei be more attractive than Jia Yueting? Time will tell.
Resources:
1. "Tuanche.com revokes privatization, when will it turn losses into profits?" "Finance and economics already know;
2. "Exclusive Dialogue|Wenwei, Tuanche Network: From Drainage to Elite Users, "Virtual Dealers" or Future Competitive Tools", AC Car;
3. "Focus on segmenting the automobile market" Group Car plans to mass-produce new cars and open pre-sales this year, Sohu Automobile
4. "Tuanche Network: Grassroots Entrepreneurship Helps Grassroots Tuanche", Beijing News;
5, "big factories have built cars, engineers are not enough", leopard change;
6. "Tuanche CEO first talks about making cars with nuclear weapons, and a week of car market events", Auto Business Review