【Introduction: On February 11, Luxshare Precision officially announced its entry into the new energy automobile industry. Its shareholder, Lixun Limited, spent 10.054 billion yuan to acquire 19.88% of the shares of Chery Holdings, 7.87% of chery Automobile and 6.24% of the equity of Chery New Energy from Qingdao Wudaokou, the largest shareholder of Chery Holdings. After the completion of the equity transaction, Qingdao Wudaokou's shareholding in Chery Holdings will drop to 26.89%, becoming the second largest shareholder of Chery Holdings, and Lixun Precision's parent company, Lixun Limited, will rank fourth. After Lixun enters the game, after the completion of the transaction, the shareholding ratio of Qingdao Wudaokou Fund in Chery Holdings will drop to 26.89%, lower than the 27.68% of Wuhu Construction Investment Co., Ltd., which means that Qingdao Wudaokou Fund and the Qingdao Municipal Government behind it will lose the majority shareholder status of Chery Holdings. 】
Written| by Zhang Dachuan and editor | Kangqiao
At the same time as acquiring the equity of Chery Holdings, Lixun Precision also signed the Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement with three Chery-related companies, including Chery Holdings, Chery Shares, and Chery New Energy, in Wuhu to lay a strategic partnership for both sides. In addition, Luxshare Precision and Chery New Energy intend to jointly establish a joint venture company. Among them, Lixun Precision subscribed 500 million yuan to hold 30% of the registered capital, and Chery New Energy subscribed 1.167 billion yuan and held 70% of the registered capital. The joint venture will specialize in the R&D and manufacturing of new energy vehicles, and provide cutting-edge R&D design, mass production platform and sea exit for Lixun Precision Automotive's core automotive components business. In the medium to long term, the joint venture company hopes to become a mainstream domestic parts company.
Luxshare Precision seeks transformation
OEM for potential Apple cars is considered by all parties to be the biggest reason for its investment in Chery Automobile. Engaging in OEM does not require a lot of original capabilities, but it requires a relatively mature and reliable car manufacturing process, and can ensure that the vehicle can be continuously delivered experience. In this regard, Chery, which has a long experience in car manufacturing, is a more suitable partner for Luxshare Precision. This idea is actually completely consistent with the previous idea of Foxconn and Geely establishing a joint venture company focusing on the field of foundry. From the perspective of comprehensive information from all aspects, Apple's car is already on the string and has to be sent.
However, in addition to the OEM Apple car, Luxshare Precision itself seeks new business transformation is the key to its entry into the automotive industry. OEM for Apple, although the volume is large, but the added value is not high, the profit margin is relatively limited. In particular, Apple supports multiple foundry enterprises at the same time, which also has the purpose of mutual restraint. From the perspective of Luxshare Precision, once Apple's foundry strategy changes, it will inevitably have an immeasurable impact on the company, which means that Luxshare Precision does not have any right to speak about Apple.
Regarding the business of Luxshare Precision's own car manufacturing, it is actually not optimistic about all parties. As an electronic foundry company, Luxshare Precision not only has no experience in car manufacturing and related technology accumulation, but also has no experience in marketing and customer operation and maintenance. As for Chery Automobile, a joint venture with Lixun Precision, in addition to having rich experience in car manufacturing, it is actually difficult to cope with the impact of forward-looking technology and business models in the era of intelligent electric vehicles. And this 10 billion yuan is still injected into Qingdao Wudaokou, whether it can eventually flow into or what proportion can flow into Chery Automobile, it is still unknown.
Chery's appeal to Qingdao is declining
At present, the situation of the domestic automotive industry and the use of Qingdao Wudaokou as a carrier to hold Chery at that time have undergone earth-shaking changes. Although the new force car manufacturing enterprises are not large, they have formed a relatively large impact on traditional car companies, both from the perspective of industry influence and market value. In other words, the industry influence and the aggregation effect on upstream and downstream of new car companies with small sales volume are far greater than the production base of a traditional car company.
For the Qingdao government, in the case of many traditional car production bases including SAIC-GM-Wuling, FAW-Volkswagen, FAW Jiefang, Sinotruk and BAIC New Energy, the introduction of Chery projects for the Qingdao Municipal Government, only the impact of the volume level, it is difficult to have a direct impact on the comprehensive transformation and upgrading of Qingdao's automobile industry. Now Qingdao needs no longer a simple production base, whether it can bring research and development and even headquarters functions to Qingdao, it is estimated that the Qingdao local government is more important. However, for Chery Automobile, an important prerequisite for the previous mixed reform is to leave Chery's headquarters functions in Wuhu. From The perspective of Wuhu, once there is no Chery, the pressure is very large.
If you take into account the previous Hefei venture capital Weilai Automobile, not only let itself make a lot of money with the rise in the stock price of american electric vehicles in 2020, but also firmly retain the production base of Weilai Automobile and the functions of Weilai China headquarters in Hefei. Hefei has also built a more competitive electric vehicle industry base with the help of WEIlai and Volkswagen Jianghuai projects, so that Hefei has its own place in domestic intelligent electric vehicles. For Qingdao, achieving such an effect as Hefei is its best choice. If you look at the many new forces in China, and one of the more reliable ones for in-depth cooperation and binding, I believe it is the best choice for qingdao local government.
Chery's mixed reform is still standing still
For Chery, from the mixed reform curtain that opened in the second half of 2019, it has not had a substantial impact on Chery's daily operations until now. There is no essential difference between chery and Chery at that time, and the domestic and even global auto market is undergoing earth-shaking changes.
Now the domestic electric vehicle market is not only a new force car company such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli playing a leading role. Mainstream car companies, including Volkswagen, GM and Toyota, have begun or will soon invest in very competitive electric vehicle models to the domestic market. The domestic traditional car companies' own brands have played a high-end electric vehicle sub-brand. It not only hopes to grab a larger market share with new brands, but also hopes to achieve the overall brand upward of the group through these new brands. But now Chery, the most well-known is only a micro-electric vehicle such as a small ant. In terms of high-end brands, Chery Xingtu is more just similar to the layout of the traditional fuel vehicle era such as Geely Lynk & Co and Great Wall WEY. In terms of technology and business models, it has been slightly out of touch with the times. As for autonomous driving, whether it is self-research or cooperation with other autonomous driving technology companies, Chery also has few big moves. Therefore, even if luxshare precision is introduced as an outsider of smart electric vehicles this time, the help for Chery's future smart electric vehicle business is limited.
Comments
From the very beginning, Chery Mixed Reform has been very reluctant to invest from peers. From Qingdao Wudaokou to Luxshare Precision, it seems that only these outsiders will not have an impact on Chery Automobile's business decisions. But from 2019 to now more than two years, Chery is still the Chery, mixed reform has not stimulated Chery's new vitality. In the forward-looking technology related to the "new four modernizations" of automobiles, Chery has not yet been able to come up with something eye-catching, which is a challenge for Chery's future divergence.
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