Evergrande car manufacturing has a sense of desperation, Evergrande Automobile wants to get consumer recognition is not easy, at present Hengchi does not have a particularly prominent highlight.
Wen 丨 BT Finance Yiran
On January 23, the Daily Economic News and other media reported that a number of "heavyweights" entered Evergrande, and Evergrande may usher in major changes.
China Evergrande (00333. HK) issued a change of director announcement stating that with effect from 23 January 2022, Sean has been appointed as an executive Director and Leung Lam has been appointed as a non-executive Director. Lai Lixin and Huang Xiangui resigned as executive directors. According to reports, this personnel change is the first time that a person who has nothing to do with Evergrande serves as a non-executive director, and the appointment is a senior executive specializing in the disposal of non-performing assets, which may be related to Evergrande's further resolution of debt risks.
It is worth noting that Shaun, who was appointed as executive director, is currently the chairman of Evergrande Automobile, after Evergrande Automobile just received good news. On January 12, Hengchi Automobile officially released the official off-line promotional film of Hengchi 5, which is the first model launched since Evergrande built the car.
The good news is coming, is Evergrande going to get through the most dangerous moment? What can Evergrande Auto bring to Evergrande?
Evergrande automobile is Evergrande's life-saving straw?
It is said that the launch of the production line is 12 days earlier than originally planned. Hengchi 5 is Evergrande's first compact pure electric SUV, the front face closed grille with T-shaped daytime running lights on both sides, body size 4725 * 1925 * 1688mm, wheelbase 2780mm, equipped with the electric motor produced by United Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd., the maximum power of 150kW.
According to the model plan previously announced by Evergrande's official, Hengchi 5 is the cheapest model among the 10 models of Evergrande Automobile, and the car is expected to be priced at 200,000 yuan, compared with Audi Q3 and BMW X1.
In 2017, in the midst of a controversy, Xu Jiayin's car-making dream was officially launched. At that time, perhaps he had already felt the hidden crisis of the real estate market, and Boss Xu's idea was to use new energy vehicles as the leader of Evergrande's diversified industries to reduce dependence on real estate.
At first, Evergrande tried to cooperate with Jia Yueting's FF car, and soon after Jia Yueting's credit went bankrupt again, the two sides parted ways. Subsequently, Evergrande bought a variety of auto assets in the form of acquisitions, including a 40% stake in car dealer Guanghui Group, a Swedish electric vehicle company NEVS, and a stake in the Swedish sports car brand Königsegg. At the same time, Evergrande Automobile has built new energy vehicle production bases in Nansha, Guangzhou, Tianjin and other new energy vehicles in China.
In November 2019, Xu Jiayin proposed that the company's goal is to build Evergrande New Energy Vehicle into the world's largest and strongest new energy vehicle group in 3 to 5 years. Xu Jiayin summarized Evergrande's strategy in a very easy-to-understand way: "Evergrande wants to change lanes and overtake, summed up in 5 sentences: buy, buy, buy, circle, big, good." ”
According to the information officially disclosed by Evergrande, Evergrande invested 14.7 billion yuan in 2019 to build cars, plans to invest 5.7 billion yuan in 2020, and is expected to invest 9 billion yuan in 2021.
2021 is a crisis for Xu Jiayin. It is in this case that Evergrande has not given up its car-making plan. At the beginning of 2021, Evergrande has completed the launch of Hengchi 1, 3, 5, 6 and 7 trial production vehicles, and successfully completed the winter test, summer test and plateau test. However, as Evergrande's liquidity crisis was exposed to the public, Evergrande faced multiple difficulties such as continuous decline in stock prices, executives reducing their holdings and cashing out, and shortage of project funds, Evergrande's car-building plan had to be adjusted.
At an internal meeting in 2021, Evergrande said that without building a car, the company has invested 47.4 billion yuan in the Hengchi brand. In order to cope with the new situation, Evergrande Automobile has reduced the six models that were originally developed simultaneously, and only retained the fastest progressing Hengchi 5 and Hengchi 6 models.
In October, Xu Jiayin announced a major strategic adjustment of Evergrande, in the next 10 years to achieve real estate to new energy vehicle industry transformation, the formation of new energy vehicles as the mainstay, real estate as a supplement to the industrial pattern, Evergrande plans to achieve annual production and sales of more than 1 million vehicles by 2025, 2035 to achieve annual sales of more than 5 million vehicles.
If you can't see the real car, the outside world will naturally have a distrustful attitude towards Evergrande's goals. In the same month, Liu Yongzhuo, president of Evergrande Automobile, briefed on the progress of Evergrande's car manufacturing and put forward the slogan of "working hard for three months to ensure that the first car of the Tianjin plant rolls off the production line". Most of the production and R&D personnel of Hengchi 5 were also transferred to Tianjin in batches to support. In November 2021, Hengchi 5 LX appeared in the new car declaration directory of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The off-line of Hengchi 5 can be seen as Evergrande car has achieved the stage goal, but it is understood that the car is still in the small batch trial production stage, and the official mass production will wait until August this year.
It can be said that Evergrande regards car building as a life-saving straw for regaining a new life, and it must grit its teeth and survive no matter what. The new car-making forces that are currently booming have experienced the darkest moment of being on the verge of dissolution, but some car companies have indeed ushered in the rising sun after a difficult struggle.
Evergrande wants to turn over is still bumpy
Evergrande Automobile's 2021 annual report shows that the company achieved revenue of 6.92 billion yuan in the first half of the year, an increase of 53.5% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the mother was 4.786 billion yuan.
In recent years, Evergrande's various borrowings have decreased year by year, while accounts payable and other payables have increased year by year, and the asset-liability ratio has remained at 80% for a long time. Affected by the debt thunderstorm of the parent company, the three H-share listed stocks of Evergrande Group have suffered a devastating blow, the market value of China Evergrande is only more than 20 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the stock price of Evergrande Automobile has also been leaked from the highest point of 72.45 Hong Kong dollars / share in February 2021 to the lowest point of 1.66 Hong Kong dollars / share in September, and the market value has shrunk by 97.71%.
The dive in Evergrande's stock price has also made the listed companies that hold Evergrande's equity miserable.
Recently, listed companies have successively announced their 2021 performance, and more than 20 listed companies, including Guangtian Group, Quanzhu Shares, Jiayu Shares, and World Union Bank, have issued announcements related to Evergrande's "thunderstorm". On January 14, Liberal Arts Garden expects to lose 1.3 billion yuan to 1.8 billion yuan in 2021, Shenzhen Holdings recorded an impairment of HK$6 billion in Evergrande Real Estate equity, and the two companies lost profits for 5 years in one year.
To be fair, it is not easy for Evergrande to push the Hengchi 5 downline in such a dilemma, and even has a sense of desperation. However, it is not easy for Evergrande to make a difference in the new energy automobile industry, after all, it is necessary to win the trust of consumers in the middle of the transformation of traditional automobile companies and the new forces of car manufacturing in order to win back the confidence of the capital market in Evergrande. It is not easy to get consumer recognition, at least Hengchi needs to come up with a different selling point. At present, Hengchi does not have a particularly prominent highlight, and it may be necessary to find a blockbuster big buyer or cooperation to achieve a breakthrough.
Even if it is a major positive for Hengchi 5 to go down the line, the capital market does not seem to buy it. Evergrande Automobile's stock price rose slightly by 3.33% on January 12, closing at HK$4.03 per share, and on January 13, it opened high and went low, closing down 14.4%.
Evergrande did its best to appease creditors and consumers and strive to stabilize the situation.
On January 17, Evergrande Group said in official channels that as of the end of December 2021, Evergrande's national resumption rate was 92.9%. According to the plan, the group will hand over 30,000 units in January.
On January 21, Evergrande issued an announcement that the company's risk mitigation committee is actively studying solutions and communicating with creditors, and suggests that CICC and BOC International Asia be increased as financial advisers, and Zhong Lun Law Firm has a legal liability partnership as legal counsel to carry out debt risk mitigation work.
Evergrande's car is full of dangers and obstacles
Evergrande's biggest problem now comes from the lack of money, but building cars is a more money-burning thing.
New energy vehicles are well known as big money burners. As the leader of China's new car-making forces, Li Bin, founder of Weilai, also complained: "There is no 20 billion don't want to build a car." "In 2019, NIO's net loss was as high as 11.296 billion yuan, and it lost about 540,000 yuan for each car sold.
Baidu in order to build a car, even with 50 billion yuan as the "starting threshold", and strive to launch its first electric vehicle within 3 years; and Xiaomi car even has a "sense of grandeur" of a hero's broken wrist, Lei Jun, after many inspections, officially announced that Xiaomi officially entered the intelligent electric vehicle industry, and set up a bold statement of "betting on all the reputation of life for Xiaomi cars".
Some investors in the new energy automobile industry said bluntly: "Compared with whether we can build a car, we pay more attention to whether these companies can survive." ”
Evergrande Automobile is facing not only huge pressure from funds, but also uncertainty from policies and markets. According to reports, 2022 will be the last year of the implementation of the new energy vehicle subsidy policy, after the weakening of policy support, the new energy automobile industry will surely usher in a reshuffle, the first players have seized a good position, which is not a good news for Evergrande Automobile, which has just rolled off the first car.
According to incomplete statistics, all car-making armies will take 2022 to 2023 as the node for the first car to go off the production line, and the competition for new energy vehicles will enter a white-hot stage. Weilai founder Li Bin also recently told the media that the final of new energy vehicles will come early.
The analysis pointed out that although new energy vehicles are the trend of the times, capital has also poured in, but with the increasingly fierce competition in the new energy track, how to tell a different story, winning the favor of capital is still a problem that new car-making forces need to face, and Evergrande Automobile does not have a particularly bright performance at present.
In addition, the new car-making forces are also facing the problem of card necks such as "chip shortage", and Evergrande Automobile is certainly no exception. Gartner data shows that since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, 85% of the world's auto companies have been plagued by chip shortages, and the all-round "core" pain in 2021 has led to the production reduction or suspension of production of many car companies.
The shortage of chips has forced Chinese car companies to find breakthroughs internally. In order to avoid the recurrence of the "core" pain, the giants that have poured into the field of car manufacturing in recent years are also thinking about seizing the opportunity in chip development. A few years ago, almost all the graduates of chip manufacturing related majors who switched to the Internet became the fragrant food of the job market in this year, and Evergrande, which was already facing financial problems, may have to disperse a part of the funds to the chip manufacturing business, which is undoubtedly worse.
The first model of Hengchi Automobile off the production line is undoubtedly a shot in the arm for the crisis-ridden Evergrande, but the uncertainty of the new energy vehicle industry policy and the white-hot market competition will bring more dangers to Evergrande Automobile, Evergrande Automobile undoubtedly made a good start, but the road ahead is still heavy and watery.
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