On the eve of the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Yihuatong announced that it had officially submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Text | Du Qiaomei
The Beijing Winter Olympics, the first olympic event to truly achieve "carbon neutrality", are in full swing. In addition to building low-carbon venues and providing green electricity to promote carbon neutrality, in the low-carbon transportation system, the Beijing Winter Olympics also used hydrogen energy as a clean energy vehicle group, undertook the main transportation tasks between venues, and actively promoted the demonstration application of hydrogen fuel vehicles in line with the relevant model catalogs.
According to the data released by the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, the winter Olympics demonstrated the operation of more than 1,000 hydrogen energy vehicles and equipped with more than 30 hydrogen refueling stations, which is the world's largest fuel cell vehicle demonstration. This also makes hydrogen fuel cell vehicles a bright color in the green Winter Olympics, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles from Toyota Motor, BAIC Group, Yutong Bus, Foton Motor and other car companies have actively invested in the Beijing Winter Olympics.
It is understood that the demonstration operation models of the Winter Olympics include hydrogen fuel cell buses, hydrogen fuel cell cars, hydrogen fuel cell special vehicles, etc. Among them, Foton Motor provided 515 hydrogen fuel buses, accounting for 80% of the hydrogen fuel buses that provided guarantees for the Winter Olympics, setting a record for the largest scale and the largest number of models ever served by hydrogen fuel buses in the international sports event; Yutong 185 hydrogen fuel buses (100 in Beijing and 85 in Zhangjiakou) to serve the entire competition area of Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou; Geely Interstellar provided 80 hydrogen fuel city buses, Toyota provided 107 hydrogen fuel minibuses; in terms of car models, Toyota supplied 140 second-generation MIRAIs.
It is worth mentioning that from the 3 hydrogen fuel cell buses in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, to the 196 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and then to the thousands of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration operations at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, after more than ten years of development, the mainland hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles are ushering in new development opportunities.
Under the guidance of the "double carbon" goal, with the green Winter Olympics as an opportunity, the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry will also enter a new stage of development.
Beijing Securities Research Report believes that the Beijing Winter Olympics will fully demonstrate the potential of hydrogen energy applications, rapidly enhance hydrogen energy cognition, and help promote industrialization; and CITIC Securities pointed out that 2021 is the first year of perfect hydrogen energy policy framework, the landing of fuel cell demonstration applications and the continuous promotion of "double carbon" goals, promoting hydrogen energy on the energy stage.
It is expected that in 2022, driven by subsidy policies, continuous cost reduction in the industrial chain, and carbon reduction demand, the pace of hydrogen energy industrialization is expected to continue to accelerate, and application scenarios are also expected to continue to innovate.
Urban agglomerations seek a breakthrough
With the opportunity of the Winter Olympics, hydrogen energy models will be understood and recognized by more consumers. In fact, under the continuous help of favorable policies and the promotion of the "double carbon" goal, the hydrogen energy industry has already ushered in a development boom and has become a new outlet.
In fact, in the "14th Five-Year Plan" outline, hydrogen energy has been forward-looking planned as one of the potential industries in the future. With the heating up of hydrogen energy policies since the second half of 2021, the domestic hydrogen energy industry has once again ushered in a development boom. According to incomplete statistics, at present, 30 provinces and more than 150 cities in the country have mentioned hydrogen energy development in their "14th Five-Year Plan", and more than 50 cities have issued special plans for the development of local hydrogen energy industry. According to the planning goals of various provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, by 2025, more than 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations will be built nationwide, and more than 54,000 hydrogen fuel vehicles will be promoted.
The China Hydrogen Energy Alliance predicts that under the carbon peak scenario in 2030, the proportion of hydrogen energy in China's terminal energy system will increase from 2.7% in 2019 to 6%, and by 2060, the carbon neutral scenario will increase to 20%.
However, at present, in terms of achieving large-scale and commercial utilization, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles still face many challenges.
In order to overcome hydrogen energy storage and transportation technology, achieve the effective utilization of inter-city resources, and improve the hydrogen energy utilization system, in September 2020, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the "Notice on Carrying Out demonstration applications of fuel cell vehicles", and during the demonstration period, the "award in lieu of compensation" will be adopted to reward the shortlisted demonstration city clusters according to their goals, and the demonstration period is tentatively set at four years.
Encourage cities with different resource endowments, technical conditions and vision goals to explore different technical routes and development models, and cities with balanced advantages should be committed to building model cities for the development of hydrogen energy industry and playing a leading role in demonstration。
It is understood that the declaration of fuel cell vehicle demonstration city cluster has been closed in November 2020, and a total of 19 urban agglomerations in China have been declared, and are currently in the stage of comprehensive review of the implementation plan of the demonstration city cluster. According to the Ministry of Finance's previous reply of "the program is mature and one is implemented one by one", various urban agglomerations have accelerated the industrialization exploration of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
After the beijing-shanghai-Guangdong three urban agglomerations led by Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai municipality and Foshan City, Guangdong Province, were selected in 2021, on December 28, 2021, the Ministry of Finance and other five departments issued the "Notice on Launching a New Batch of Fuel Cell Vehicle Demonstration Application Work", and the two urban agglomerations of Hebei and Henan were officially approved, plus the first batch of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai and Guangdong city clusters announced before, in 2022, a total of 5 major urban agglomerations will officially roll out the curtain of demonstration applications of fuel cell vehicles on the mainland.
Among them, the Hebei urban agglomeration adopts a 1+9+N model in composition, led by Zhangjiakou City, and jointly declared by Tangshan City, Baoding City, Handan City, Qinhuangdao City, Dingzhou City, Xinji City, Xiong'an New District and Wuhai City and Bazhou Korla City, N means to strengthen the industrial chain of the urban agglomeration but does not participate in the vehicle promotion task, there are Shanghai Fengxian District, Henan Province Zhengzhou City, Shandong Province Zibo City and Liaocheng City.
It is worth noting that as the co-host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Zhangjiakou City is promoting the development of the whole industrial chain of hydrogen energy, in the upstream and downstream industries such as hydrogen storage equipment manufacturing, hydrogen energy vehicle manufacturing, Zhangjiakou has 16 industrial chain projects landed, in the promotion and application end, Zhangjiakou has put into operation 224 hydrogen fuel cell buses.
Henan urban agglomeration is led by Zhengzhou, united with Xinxiang, Luoyang, Puyang, Anyang, Kaifeng and other cities for declaration, as the leading city, Zhengzhou has an automobile industry base, including Yutong, Haima Automobile, etc., in the manufacture and promotion of fuel cell vehicles have a scene advantage, while Kaifeng, Luoyang, Xinxiang and other cities mainly in hydrogen preparation, fuel cell related parts and components have an industrial chain foundation.
In addition, by the end of 2021, 16 provinces and cities across the country, including Beijing, Shandong, Hebei, Tianjin, Sichuan, Zhejiang and Ningxia, have formulated hydrogen energy development plans.
In addition, in order to accelerate the promotion and application of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, on January 21, the Ministry of Communications publicly released the "14th Five-Year Development Plan for Green Transportation" (hereinafter referred to as the "Planning"), proposing to promote the application of electric trucks and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, such as promoting the pilot application of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in intercity passenger transport, heavy trucks, cold chain logistics vehicles and other cities such as Zhangjiakou.
Industry leaders accelerate the layout
According to the "White Paper on China's Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Industry" released by the China Hydrogen Energy Alliance, it is estimated that in 2050, the domestic hydrogen energy output value will exceed 10 trillion yuan. Huatai Securities Research Report believes that it is optimistic about the trend of hydrogen energy industry in the next decade, especially optimistic about investment opportunities in hydrogen production and hydrogen-using equipment (fuel cells, on-board storage and transportation equipment).
In fact, since last year, under the dual blessing of policy and technology, hydrogen energy concept stocks have become a hot topic in the A-share market. Wind data shows that the hydrogen energy index will increase by 44.94% in 2021.
In the face of the industry's outlet, leading car companies have also seized the opportunity to layout. Yutong, SAIC, Foton, Great Wall, Geely Commercial Vehicles, etc. have made clear plans and increased investment to promote the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and the commercialization of products.
Not only independent brands, but also international hydrogen fuel cell giants have opened up layouts in China. In August 2020, Toyota, Yihuatong (688339), FAW, GAC, Dongfeng Motor and BAIC jointly invested 1.67 billion yen to register and establish United Fuel Cell System Research and Development (Beijing) Co., Ltd., which conducts full-process development based on Toyota technology, and cooperates with major OEMs and Yihuatong to develop parts and fuel cell systems. Among them, Toyota holds 65% of the shares, Yihuatong holds 15% of the shares, and FAW, GAC, Dongfeng Motor and BAIC all hold 5% of the shares.
In June 2021, Toyota and Yihuatong jointly invested in the establishment of Huafeng Fuel Cell Co., Ltd., with a total investment of about 8 billion yen, each holding 50% of the shares, through the production and sale of fuel cell systems, thereby popularizing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
It is understood that at the Winter Olympics, Beiqi Foton invested 212 vehicles equipped with Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell system to provide support for the Winter Olympics, which is also the result of the tripartite cooperation between Toyota, BAIC Group and Yihuatong.
It is worth noting that on the eve of the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Yihuatong announced that it has officially submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for listing on the main board, with Guotai Junan International and Zhifu as joint sponsors.
In the prospectus, Yihuatong said that the net proceeds from the IPO will be mainly used for research and development, increasing the production capacity of fuel cell stacks, potential investments and acquisitions, enhancing brand awareness, and being used for working capital and other general corporate purposes.
According to the data, Yihuatong was established in 2012, is committed to the research and development and industrialization of fuel cell systems, in 2016 products began mass production, the main customers for a variety of commercial vehicles, including buses, city buses and logistics vehicles, while selling fuel cell parts, such as on-board hydrogen systems, in 2016 landed on the new third board, in 2020 landed on the science and technology board, becoming the first domestic "hydrogen fuel cell stock".
According to the prospectus, since 2016, Yihuatong has sold more than 2,000 fuel cell systems to more than 20 Chinese commercial vehicle manufacturers. In terms of R&D investment, in 2019, 2020 and the nine months ended September 30, 2020 and September 30, 2021, the Company incurred R&D expenses of RMB83.902 million, RMB74.671 million, RMB48.254 million and RMB58.888 million, accounting for 15.2%, 13.0%, 37.4% and 15.8% of the total revenue of each period.
In terms of profit and gross profit, in 2019, the net profit of Yihuatong was about 45.9 million yuan, and in 2020, the net loss was about 9.76 million yuan. In the first three quarters of 2021, the net loss of Yihuatong was about 92.8 million yuan, an increase from the net loss of about 59.28 million yuan in the same period of 2020.
In addition, as an industry that has just started commercialization, there are few participants, and the performance of suppliers or customers is too high, but the risk cannot be ignored, mainly for the commercialization wave to promote the increase in entrants, the industry pattern refreshes the risk of market share decline, and the product strength is particularly important, and the replacement risk is high.
However, Yihuatong pointed out in the prospectus that by the end of 2020, the number of Fuel Cell System manufacturers in China will exceed 100. However, the market competition is relatively concentrated, and the total market share of the top five fuel cell system suppliers in 2020 in terms of the total sales power output of fuel cell systems will reach 93.2%. At the same time, as a pioneer in the research and development and commercialization of fuel cell systems in China, Yihuatong will sell a total of 35.0MW of fuel cell systems in 2020, and the total sales power output of fuel cell systems ranks first, with a market share of 34.8% in China's fuel cell system market.
As of the release of the think tank Jun, Yihua reported that it was 196.53 yuan per share, an increase of 156% over the issue price of 76.6 yuan per share, and the A stock market value was about 14.03 billion yuan.