China Fund News reporter Ivan
Recently, according to a number of media reports, Rock Technology founder and CEO Chang Jing's car-making project Luoke Automobile has completed a financing of 100 million US dollars at the end of last year, led by Tencent Group, with an investment of more than 50 million US dollars (about 320 million yuan), Sequoia China, Stone Technology's original shareholders Gao Rong Capital, Qiming Venture Capital and Yunjiu Capital. In addition, the post-investment valuation of Luoke Automobile has reached 240 million US dollars.
In addition, according to 36Kr quoting investors, after Tencent invested in Luoke Automobile, Weilai Capital and Meituan had relevant people who intended to contact Luoke Automobile to negotiate investment matters, but they were rejected.
(Stone Technology Logo Source: Sohu)
According to the information of Tianyancha, Shanghai Luoke Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. was established on January 8, 2021 with a registered capital of 12.5 million yuan and is currently in the angel round financing stage. The company's business scope involves the sales of new energy vehicles, new energy technology research and development, etc., the legal representative is Changjing, Changjing is also the company's largest shareholder, holding 40% of the shares.
(Screenshot source: Tianyancha)
In addition, tianyancha information shows that Shanghai Luoke Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has successfully registered the trademark of "Pole Stone Automobile" in the category of transportation tools and construction repair. In addition, the company has applied for a number of trademarks for "Little Stone Motors" and "Stone Motors", and the current status is "Refusal for Review" or "Awaiting Substantive Examination".
In response to CEO Changjing's down-to-market car construction, The China Fund News reporter consulted an internal employee of Stone Technology and got the answer that the company's current unified caliber for both internal and external affairs is that the project belongs to CEO Changjing's personal behavior, and is not directly related to Stone Technology, Stone Technology is not involved, and Stone Technology is still focusing on intelligent hardware research and development.
"Zero experience" car enthusiasts enter the "car-making tide"
The first car to benchmark the Mercedes-Benz G-series off-road vehicle
This is not the first time that a CEO of Stone Technology has built a car.
According to the information of Tianyancha, as early as Last May, Stone Technology applied for the trademark of "Stone Intelligent Car", when there were media reports that the first car of Stone Automobile hoped to use range extension technology to break through 1,000 kilometers in a single time.
According to the 36Kr report, the stone car project was actually launched at the end of 2020, and the first car positioned the off-road system because Chang Jing himself was a "typical car enthusiast" and especially loved off-road vehicles.
Although Chang Jing's own experience in car building is zero, he has successfully pulled an experienced "ally" into the game. According to the information of Tianyancha, Yan Feng, former partner and chief technology officer of WM Motor, has joined Luoke Company and served as director and general manager.
According to public information, he was the youngest post-80s executive of SAIC Motor Group, and successively served as deputy general manager (deputy CIO) of the information strategy and system support department, senior manager of the information system department of SAIC Passenger Vehicle Company, PMO director, application development director, etc. Mainly responsible for the informatization of automobile enterprises. During his tenure as Deputy General Manager of Zebra (a joint venture between SAIC and Alibaba), Yan Feng was responsible for the company's product design, software development, platform construction, business operations and market branding. Since then, he has joined WM Motors, and as a venture partner and CTO, he is responsible for the design, development and operation of WM Automotive's intelligent network software and hardware products.
Yan Feng's experience is somewhat similar to Changjing' in that they are all post-80s, and they are all "technology flow" backgrounds, and both software and hardware are taken into account. Chang Jing graduated from South China University of Technology with a major in computer science and a software engineer. In 2011, he served as a senior product manager at Tencent, and since then, he has founded Meitu Tools Beijing Magic Map Genie, and in 2014, founded Stone Technology.
Stone Technology was once a star project on the Xiaomi ecological chain, and also set a record for the highest issue price of A shares, with a market value of nearly 100 billion yuan on the science and technology innovation board at its peak.
In addition, it is worth noting that the time when the stone entered the game to build the car is similar to the time when Xiaomi Lei Jun announced the car, which inevitably makes people wonder whether there is a cooperative relationship between the two. However, according to the media, the car-making projects of the two are independent of each other, and there is no cooperation or investment relationship between the two sides.
Sweeping robots and intelligent cars are separated by a "mountain"
Last year, when the news of Changjing's entry into the car was released, some netizens joked that the car was not to make an oversized "sweeping robot", plus a roof and seats.
But obviously the cost of building a car is much higher. Therefore, for the news of Changjing's car manufacturing, the market is generally worried about whether Stone Technology, as a star listed company of intelligent sweeping robots, will be diverted to build cars, after all, this will directly affect the interests of nearly 80 million shareholders. Even if Stone Technology is highly unified, that is, "building a car is a personal act of the boss and has nothing to do with the company", it still attracts a lot of controversy.
The revenue of "sweeping mao" stone technology is still good. According to the third quarter report of Stone Technology in 2021, the company achieved operating income of 3.827 billion yuan, an increase of 28.43% year-on-year, and a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 1.016 billion yuan. In the single quarter of the third quarter, the company achieved operating income of 1.479 billion yuan, an increase of 22.88% year-on-year, and achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 364 million yuan.
As of the end of the reporting period, the company had total assets of 9.407 billion yuan, an increase of 19.87% over the end of the previous year of 7.848 billion yuan.
(Screenshot source: Stone Technology Financial Report)
However, despite the double growth of revenue and profit in the first three quarters, the net profit fell sharply, coupled with the three quarterly reports disclosed in stone times, Dingdi and QM27 LIMITED in the third quarter of the sharp reduction, resulting in stone technology stock prices only two days after the disclosure of the financial report returned to the level of 1,000 yuan, and then the stock price fell again.
As of today's close, Stone Technology closed at 879 yuan / share, down 0.79%, with a total market value of 58.723 billion, but the stock price has fallen by more than 40% from its peak of nearly 1500 yuan.
In addition, according to the previous WEILAI CEO Li Bin, Xiaopeng Automobile CEO He Xiaopeng said that in order to build a car, "20 billion yuan is not enough to spend", and xiaomi, which previously announced that the car-making millet only initially invested 10 billion yuan, in terms of the cash flow and business revenue of Stone Technology, it is indeed difficult to support Changjing's car-making project.
In addition, in terms of technology, according to the public information of Tianyancha, Shanghai Luoke Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has applied for a total of 27 patents, including 24 invention patents. However, compared with the number of more than 4,600 patented technologies of new car-making forces such as Weilai and more than 1,500 patents of ideal cars, it is very thin.
The second round of "car-making tide" of technology companies is in the ascendant
The market "cake" of new energy vehicles is getting bigger and bigger. Tesla, the leader of pure electricity, set a sales record, ranking first in the market value of global car companies, with a market value of more than 1 trillion US dollars; the monthly sales of the first camp of new car-making forces "Wei Xiaoli" also exceeded 10,000 in 2021; veteran car companies such as Toyota and Volkswagen have also announced their electrification strategies and begun to make formal efforts.
According to the data of the Association of Passenger Vehicles, the sales of electric vehicles (passenger cars) in the first 11 months of 2021 will continue to grow, with a monthly year-on-year increase of more than double, and the annual sales volume is expected to reach 3.4 million units.
(New energy vehicle market from January 2020 to November 2021 Source: Inter-Passenger Association)
More and more Internet technology companies have begun to "cross-border car building" and share this "cake" in the future. In addition to Stone Technology, the other two major Internet technology giants Xiaomi and Baidu announced that they would build cars, which caused more attention.
However, the technical shortcomings of technology companies in car manufacturing are also very obvious. Before Xiaomi officially announced the car at the end of March 2021, it has begun to lay out many patents in smart cockpit, driving safety and other aspects. After the official announcement of the car, Lei Jun visited Changan, SAIC, Dongfeng, GAC, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Great Wall and many other car companies in a row, and also appeared at the headquarters of Bosch and Ningde era, and his desire for technology and attitude were very obvious.
At the end of November last year, Xiaomi officially announced the construction of a factory in Beijing, and released the news that the factory is expected to produce 300,000 units per year, and the first batch of mass production vehicles is also expected to roll off the production line in 2024. With hundreds of billions of hands in hand, xiaomi's advantages are also reflected here.
Baidu, following the launch of Apollo, which specializes in unmanned fleets, also announced the construction of cars in early 2021, but unlike Xiaomi from scratch, Baidu chose to directly cooperate with Geely to establish Jidu Automobile, which can directly use Geely's technology and platform. According to reports, Jidu Automobile has now expanded to a scale of about 1,000 people, and Baidu has also planned to invest about 50 billion yuan in the next 5 years. In addition, the first car of Jidu Automobile has begun to take shape and will be officially unveiled at this year's Beijing Auto Show.
As carbon neutrality and carbon peaking become a topic of global concern, vehicle electrification will only continue to move forward, new players will continue to pour in, and the competition in the market will become more and more intense.
Chang Jing's entry into the game seems to be a little late, and the technical and financial gap is also large with the heads. But it is undeniable that there are still more possibilities in this market, so whether Luo Ke can stir up this market, let us continue to wait and see.
Edit: Xiao Mo