Written/Neglected
Source/China Industrial Economy Information Network New Economy Channel jointly produced by Fun Knowledge Finance
On February 7, BYD, the leader of new energy vehicles, posted its first report card of the year. According to the announcement, BYD sold 93,168 new energy vehicles in January 2022, an increase of 361.73% year-on-year.
Prior to this, a number of new car-making forces have also announced the first month of delivery. According to the data, the delivery volume of Ideal Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile and Nezha Automobile in January was 12268 vehicles, 12922 vehicles and 11009 vehicles respectively, an increase of 128%, 115% and 402% respectively year-on-year.
Compared with the rapid growth of several times, Weilai Automobile is much inferior. In January, 9,652 vehicles were delivered, an increase of 33.6% year-on-year, which also made Weilai's growth rate at the bottom of the industry.
However, the flaws are not hidden, and the strong sales of new energy vehicles in the past few years have also ushered in a long-lost rise in the capital market.
Shareholders suffered heavy losses and shrank by 30%.
As of the close of trading on February 7, BYD surged 7.76%, and Great Wall Motors closed up 2.85%, sweeping away the pre-holiday decline.
In the overseas market, due to the lack of "delay" of the Spring Festival, the new forces of car-making rebounded one step ahead. On February 4, the stock prices of Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile rose by 11 and 12 percentage points respectively.
But for a large number of investors, such a rally is far from enough. Wang, a senior shareholder, also said, "When I bought Great Wall Motors at 60 yuan, it was only more than two months, and it had shrunk by 30%. In fact, there are not a few shareholders like Wang Ye who have folded their swords in the new car-making forces.
Another new energy vehicle investor, Yang Fei, calculated that in the three months after November, BYD's stock price fell by 30%, Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile also fell by 30%, and Weilai fell by more than 40%. And this is not the most tragic, Great Wall Motor stock price is almost cut, down 48% in three months.
As a result, a large number of shareholders who earned a lot of money due to new energy in the first half of the year were trapped in it near the end of the year.
Zhou Yan, a more rational investor, said bluntly that new energy vehicles in recent years are one of the few good tracks, only because the stock price has risen too much in the early stage, and the pullback is normal. Fortunately, I received it when I saw it, and I escaped a disaster.
It's just a lucky person like Zhou Yan, after all, a minority. The sudden slash of the waist has allowed many shareholders to hold shares for the New Year.
From the perspective of the industry, the stock prices of new energy vehicle companies in the early stage have risen sharply, overdrawing the future growth potential, or the key factor of this round of adjustment. In addition, the lack of core is another important factor.
Taking Weilai as an example, due to the shortage of chips and other parts, downtime and transformation and other factors, its sales in October fell off a cliff, and the delivery of 3667 new cars in the month hit a new low. Other forces, such as car-making forces, are more or less affected by this lack of core and perform differently.
However, fortunately, in January 2022, a number of car companies performed decently, but this is only "fair". As shown below, Quzhi Finance and Economics counted the sales of several head car companies, in terms of growth rate alone, in addition to the slow growth rate of Weilai, BYD, Ideal, and Xiaopeng still maintained a three-digit high growth.
▲ Head new energy brand sales (information integration from the association and announcement)
If you look at it from another angle, if the growth rate in January is compared with the growth rate in 2021, only BYD will outperform the "broader market". Both Xiaopeng Ideal and Weilai are far below the growth rate of the whole year last year.
The backyard is on fire, and each has its own troubles
Jumping out of the perspective of shareholders, although it occupies the Kangzhuang Avenue of new energy, major car companies have their own troubles.
Taking BYD as an example, although it is already a veritable brother status in domestic new energy vehicle companies, it has been plaguing it by increasing revenue and not increasing profits. In the first three quarters of 2021, BYD's revenue was 145.2 billion yuan, but the net profit attributable to the mother was only 2.443 billion yuan (down 28% year-on-year).
Why? In addition to the company's own factors, the high cost of the new energy vehicle industry chain is an important factor, of which lithium ore, the upstream lithium battery raw material, is the most important. According to industry estimates, in electric vehicles, lithium battery costs account for the largest proportion, accounting for about 40%.
At present, the cost of lithium batteries remains high and continues to rise. Relevant data show that the spot price of lithium carbonate rose to 350,000 yuan / ton in February, compared with 70,000 yuan / ton a year ago, an increase of more than 4 times in just one year. The spot price of lithium hydroxide is not to be let go, the spot is 270,000 yuan / ton, and its price was only 60,000 yuan / ton a year ago.
According to the data released by Shanghai Steel Federation on February 8, some lithium battery material quotations rose again today, lithium carbonate rose by 14,000 yuan / ton, the average price was 380,000 yuan / ton, and lithium hydroxide rose by 10,500-11,500 yuan / ton.
In addition to the cost of raw materials to compress profits, the repeated suspicion of "defrauding consumers" has also made new energy vehicle companies anxious.
On December 6, 2021, CCTV Finance reported that the Great Wall's Euler good cat "the car machine system chip is not consistent with the propaganda", and since then this incident has been on the hot search.
It is reported that a number of Euler good cat owners complained that the car is not equipped with the Qualcomm octa-core automotive chip claimed by the brand side, and the actual use is still the Intel chip produced in 2016. This results in slow response speed, running caton, and some mainstream apps cannot be installed.
According to the brand's response, "The Euler good cat model currently being sold is indeed not equipped with a Qualcomm octa-core chip, which is equipped on future models." In this regard, some Euler car owners jointly wrote a letter, proposing many plans such as "replacing the chip, giving compensation and lifelong warranty" and "unconditionally returning the car without replacing the chip + 50% cash compensation", and so far this matter has been boiling over.
According to the data of the vehicle quality network platform, from November 1, 2021 to January 31, 2022, Euler Good Cat ranked first in the complaint list of new energy models for three consecutive months, with a cumulative complaint volume of 1694, which is more than the cumulative complaint volume of the five car companies behind it. Come to think of it, this is inseparable from the "core changing door" incident.
In fact, Great Wall Motors is not the only one caught up in the road of rights protection.
Previously, the new ideal ONE was also upgraded with more than 60 new features, but the price was only raised by 10,000 yuan, attracting old car owners to protect their rights. In the owner of the old ideal ONE, the car has just arrived "depreciated", the key is that the premise of the car also got a sales commitment "there will be no changes in the near future; there is no notice that the new car is about to be released".
If the ideal and Great Wall Motors are still caught in the sweet troubles of users, then Weilai is simply "stagnant".
At the beginning of 2021, Weilai boasted that it would sell 100,000 vehicles a year. Unfortunately, the opposite happened, not only this small goal wood has been achieved, since the third quarter, the delivery volume has continued to be sluggish: in July, it lost the top spot in the delivery volume of new forces, and in October it plummeted by more than 60%, only more than 3,000 vehicles were delivered, and the annual delivery volume was surpassed by Xiaopeng, and the gap with the ideal was getting smaller and smaller. In January this year, the delivery volume growth rate was 33%, which was far less than the triple-digit growth of Xiaopeng and Ideal in terms of growth rate, and it was also lower than Xiaopeng and Ideal in absolute terms.
According to the analysis of insiders, there are two main reasons for the weakening of Weilai's sales, one is that Weilai has previously laid out more high-end models, and more consumers are currently more favored by low-end models, which are not very appropriate in the market, and the new models in the mid-range have not come out. Second, the shortage of chips also makes Weilai production at the production end, stretched.
And so on.
epilogue
In response to that sentence, new energy vehicle companies, "home" has a difficult scripture.
Entering 2022, the cost of upstream raw materials is still high, and the trend of compression of corporate profits will continue. In addition, the lack of core is still the norm, which will directly affect the production capacity side of the enterprise. Compared with other industries, the scale benefits of car companies are more obvious, and they cannot make money without quantity.
And the upcoming annual performance report may be a big touchstone. According to the data released by Great Wall Motor, the revenue in 2021 was 136.3 billion yuan, an increase of 31.95% year-on-year, and the net profit attributable to the mother was 6.78 billion, an increase of 26.47% year-on-year.