In the market competition of power batteries, there are still new entrants, and hive energy, which has the "gene" of the whole vehicle enterprise, is one of them. Recently, Hive Energy Technology Co., Ltd. recently carried out a listing counseling filing in the Jiangsu Securities Regulatory Bureau, and intends to land on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, the listing counseling broker is CITIC Securities, and the accounting firm is KPMG. In China's power battery industry, hive energy, which has only been established for three years, is actually not small. Hive Energy was originally a division of Great Wall Motor, and in February 2018, it was independently registered as a limited liability company with a registered capital of 1 billion yuan. In October 2018, Great Wall Motors transferred 100% of the equity of its wholly-owned subsidiary, Hive Energy, to Baoding Ruimao Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd. for a consideration of 790 million yuan through an agreement transfer, and at this point, Hive Energy was spun off from Great Wall Motors and transferred to the name of Wei Jianjun, the major shareholder of the listed company.
Traditional automakers Wei Jianjun, Li Shufu and Wang Chuanfu are all representatives of China's auto private forces, experiencing and benefiting from the golden age of China's auto industry, leading their respective enterprises to seek a way out from the cracks, and then emerge in the Chinese auto market and even the global market. In 1976, Baoding Nandayuan appointed the commune to set up an agricultural machinery repair station, and in 1979, it was replaced by the brand of "Great Wall Automobile Modification Factory", becoming the "first private enterprise to eat crabs" in the tide of civil construction vehicles at that time. However, due to fierce competition, the operation of the Great Wall was not easy, and at that time, the debt of Great Wall Motors was as high as 2 million yuan. In 1990, at the age of 26, Wei Jianjun was appointed to take the helm of Great Wall Motors, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. At the beginning of the fledgling, Wei Jianjun restored the Normal Operation of the Great Wall by modifying agricultural vehicles and so on. Later, from modification to manufacturing, in September 1995, Wei Jianjun focused on pickup trucks, the Great Wall pickup truck listed in 1996, sold 5,700 in 1998, and more than 13,000 in 1999, quietly sitting on the throne of the pickup truck sales champion and gaining a foothold in the automotive industry. At this time, due to the restructuring policy, Wei Jianjun obtained another 22% stake, and Great Wall Motors became a private joint-stock enterprise with clear property rights, and Wei Jianjun turned his torch to the distance. In the case that pickup trucks could not enter the city, in 2000, the Great Wall set up the earliest product development department, holding the formation of an engine company to develop off-road vehicles. After that, it is the well-known story, Wei Jianjun made a big bet, founded Haval, and by focusing on the SUV strategy, let the Great Wall be juxtaposed with Geely and Chang'an to form an independent three-strong pattern. From 2010 to 2015, Wei Jianjun adhered to the strategy of focusing on SUVs, catching up with the outlet of China's ultra-high-speed development of SUVs, Great Wall Motors occupied the market of 100,000-150,000 national SUVs, and the Haval brand became the first brand of Chinese SUVs. In 2016, Great Wall Motor's sales exceeded the million mark for the first time, and Haval H's sales in June even exceeded 80,000 vehicles, surpassing Wuling Hongguang and winning the first place in China's automobile list, becoming a generation of Shenche, and winning the annual sales championship of SUVs for many years. In 2021, Great Wall sold 1280993 cars, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year, a record high, only 40,000 fewer than its independent brother Geely, sitting firmly in the position of the SUV market for many years. The beautiful performance of Great Wall Motors has also made Wei Jianjun's wealth rise.
According to the 2021 Hurun Rich List, in the ranking of automobile-related fields, the wealth of Wei Jianjun and Han Xuejuan, who ranked first, increased by nearly 5 times last year, increasing by 173 billion yuan, ranking seventh with 218 billion yuan, up 89 places from last year. This is also the second time that Wei Jianjun has entered the top ten after a gap of 8 years, the first time in 2013, and zeng ranked fourth. In the Hurun Fortune Global 500, Great Wall Motors ranked 326th. The Jili Li Shufu family and the BYD Wang Chuanfu ranked second and third respectively. Among them, the wealth of the Li Shufu family increased by 46% to 175 billion yuan, ranking up 11 places; Wang Chuanfu's wealth was 142 billion yuan, an increase of 178%, ranking 63 places in the list of the richest people.
However, the growth rate of the value of traditional auto people is still not as good as the relevant supply chain enterprises under the new energy vehicle boom, the wealth of 53-year-old Zeng Yuqun has grown to nearly 3 times that of last year, an increase of 200 billion, with 320 billion yuan for the first time into the top three, many netizens have ridiculed, "It seems that the car manufacturers can not make batteries." From the perspective of wealth, although the main business also involves the battery business, Wang Chuanfu's wealth is 178 billion yuan less than Zeng Yuqun, which is equivalent to a "Li Shufu family", which shows that it is still necessary for the spin-off of the new energy business to increase the valuation of the secondary market for traditional car companies. At present, BYD is also accelerating the process of spin-off and listing of related businesses. If Hive Energy can be successfully listed, Wei Jianjun's wealth will be significantly improved.
Lithium battery second echelon company, intended to challenge Ningwang Hive Energy is not a new recruit of power batteries. In January 2009, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the "Ten Cities and Thousands of Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Demonstration and Application Project", commonly known as the "Ten Cities and Thousand Vehicles" plan, which opened the prelude to the sudden development of New Energy Vehicles in China. Great Wall Motors carried out pre-research work on power battery cells in 2012, and the Previous Year Ningde Era had just been established. However, Wei Jianjun did not pay too much attention to the power battery, until 2016, he established the battery division, officially cut into the power battery track, more in the consideration of the card slot, and now, the spin-off and listing of Hive Energy also means that it will become an important part of the business of Great Wall Motors. On the one hand, the breakthrough of Hive Energy can ensure the supply of new energy vehicles under Great Wall Motors, according to official data, the Euler brand focuses on young women, and the sales volume in the first 11 months of 2021 is 114102 vehicles, an increase of 162.21% year-on-year, which forces the growth rate of Great Wall Motors' Harvard, WEY and other brands, according to the 2025 plan announced by Great Wall Motors, the goal is to sell 4 million cars per year, of which 80% are new energy vehicles. On the other hand, mastering the right to speak of power batteries has become the consensus of the first echelon of main engine factories, Volkswagen, Ford Motor, Geely Automobile, SAIC Motor, etc. have joint ventures or self-built battery factories, only by mastering the core of the power battery, the future will not be stuck neck. Hive Energy, the most eye-catching at present, is mainly the landing of cobalt-free batteries before, which is the world's first real cobalt-free battery with independent intellectual property rights and core patents. In the existing ternary system of lithium-ion power batteries, the cost of cathode materials accounts for up to 30%-45%, and the proportion of cobalt is 20%, the industry knows that cobalt is a non-renewable scarce resource, the global proven reserves are only about 7.1 million tons, the price of cobalt once reached a high level of 800,000 yuan / ton, the current unit price is still about 250,000 yuan. Therefore, global battery suppliers and car companies are thinking of various ways to reduce the content of cobalt in ternary batteries. However, cobalt can stabilize the layered structure of the cathode material and improve the cycling and magnification properties of the material, and the increase in the content of cobalt will reduce the content of lithium, which eventually leads to a low energy density of the battery. Then, to extend the battery life, improve battery safety, energy density, slow down the formation of the material surface obstruction film and maintain the structure of the electrode material is the key. As early as 2008, in order to reduce cobalt and reduce Panasonic, it has been laid out in the field of high-nickel batteries. In 2017, LG Chemical, SKI and Samsung SDI announced almost simultaneously that they would develop the NCM 811 high-nickel battery and achieve mass production a year later. In July 2019, Hive Energy officially released its first cell product based on cobalt-free materials. Before the product release, Hive Energy even played the slogan of "earlier than Te, longer than Y, binning real". Honeycomb Energy adopts binary nickel manganese lithium cathode material, and introduces cationic doping and single crystal technology to reduce the ternary cobalt content to 0, to solve the problem of battery structural stability in the absence of cobalt, which is safer than ternary lithium, longer cycle life, higher energy density than lithium iron phosphate, and significantly lower cost than ternary lithium of the same level. In terms of cobalt-free batteries, it seems that the hive beehive seems to have been ahead of tesla and ningde era, and has developed a high-performance "total cobalt-free" power battery that Tesla, Ningde era and BYD cannot achieve for the time being. Entering 2020, the "cobalt-free" wind is blowing bigger and bigger. Tesla, CATL, and Shanshan are all conducting cobalt-free battery research and development. Tesla has achieved about 9:0.5:0.5 in the ternary formula, which means that the cobalt content has dropped to the level of 3%. However, considering the multiplier characteristics, mileage and other factors, on the basis of 3%, continue to do extreme de-cobaltation or even no cobalt, and there is a great difficulty in the technical route. At the same time, the hive energy began to develop rapidly, the power battery application branch data show that the hive energy since April 2020 began to load the car, August into the power battery loading volume ranking of the TOP20, 2020 hive energy loading volume of 484.90MWh, the domestic ranked 13th, the market share of 0.78%. The installed capacity of domestic power batteries in 2021 reached 154.5 GWh, an increase of 143% year-on-year. According to the latest data released by the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, the installed power battery volume of Honeycomb Energy in China in 2021 will be 3.22 GWh, ranking sixth, with a market share of about 2%. NINGDE Times (300750.SZ) ranked first in the industry, with a market share of more than 50%, followed by BYD, AVIC Lithium Battery, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and LG New Energy. Although there is still a big gap with the Ningde era, but hive energy is the fastest growing one of the TOP 10 enterprises, less than 3 years independent, hive energy has become a "new dark horse" on the power battery track in China and even the world, and has become a "darling" sought after by capital, since 2021 has implemented three rounds of financing, the total financing scale of up to 19.78 billion yuan, the valuation of 26 billion yuan. The order in the hands of Hive Energy has exceeded 400GWh, the actual production capacity is only 5GWh, the pressure of delivery is visible to the naked eye, and capacity planning is imminent. Hive Energy has built factories in Changzhou, Jiangsu, Suining, Sichuan, Huzhou, Zhejiang, Ma'anshan, Jiangsu, Nanjing, Jiangsu and other places, with a production capacity of 297GWh under construction, while Hive Energy plans to achieve 600 GWh battery production capacity by 2025. It is worth mentioning that the Cataline era is expected to have a production capacity of 600GWh by the end of 2025, which shows that Hive Energy is eager to benchmark the Ningde era. On the whole, as a latecomer to the power battery, Honeycomb Energy has a high technical starting point, no burden of historical production capacity, and no shortage of possibilities for overtaking in curves.