Traditional car companies have once again truly felt the pressure brought about by the "back wave" of car manufacturing.
For a long time, with the volume and lean management of the world's top sales, Toyota has been the world's most profitable car company. But now, that title has quietly changed hands.
Not long ago, Tesla submitted its 10-K annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, publicly disclosing its revenue data in major markets around the world. The data shows that Tesla's gross profit margin in the fourth quarter of 2021 was as high as 27.4%. This figure has far exceeded toyota, which claims to be "the world's most profitable car company". During the same period, Toyota Motor's gross profit margin was 19.6%.
Not only Toyota has been "crushed" by Tesla, from the official data, the gross profit margin of the new forces is generally higher than that of traditional car companies, including Volkswagen, Ford, General Motors and other auto giants. However, the sales of these recruits are not even as small as those of traditional car companies.
"Gross profit margin reflects the company's ability to manage costs and funds, and is also one of the criteria for judging the profitability of enterprises." Industry insider Zhu Rong told Future Auto Daily. Why is it that the new forces whose sales scale is not as large as traditional car companies, and even the new forces that have not yet escaped the quagmire of losses, are more "making money" than traditional car companies?
Sales are less than a fraction of traditional car companies, but the gross profit margin is fully crushed
For car companies, sales volume is a key factor affecting their revenue and profits, and the scale of sales directly affects revenue, and costs will also be diluted with the scale effect. In the past two years, the delivery volume of new forces has increased year by year, and the gross profit margin has also turned positive and increased to double digits.
Official data show that in 2021, Tesla's annual gross profit margin will reach 25.3%, and the gross profit margin of bicycles will be as high as 30.6%. "Wei Xiaoli" is close behind, in the third quarter of 2021, the gross profit margin of the three brothers was 20.3%, 14.4% and 23.3% respectively.
Among traditional car companies, according to YCharts data, in the third quarter of 2021, the gross profit margin of Volkswagen Group was 15.67%; in the fourth quarter of 2021, toyota motor's gross profit margin was 19.6%, Ford's gross profit margin was 14.3%, and General Motors' gross profit margin was only 11.9%. It can be seen that the gross profit margin of auto giants is generally lost to the new forces, and the gross profit margin performance of independent car companies is even less satisfactory.
In the first three quarters of 2021, the gross profit margin of BYD, the "independent brother", was only 12.97%; the gross profit margin of Great Wall Motors in the same period was 16.6%. In the first half of 2021, Geely Automobile's gross profit margin was 17.2%, and Changan Automobile's gross profit margin was 15.32%. The head car companies are not too far behind, and the gross profit margin of more independent car companies is hovering below 10%.
Even compared with the higher-priced luxury brands, the gross profit margin of the new forces is still not lagging behind. YCharts data shows that in the third quarter of 2021, the gross profit margin of BMW Group was 18.93% and Mercedes-Benz was 21.22%; in the same period, Ferrari's gross profit margin was 19.54%, while the gross profit margin of Porsche, the most profitable brand of volkswagen group, was 25.21%.
Among the joint venture car companies, Beijing Benz's gross profit margin level has always been far ahead, and its gross profit margin in the first half of 2021 was 27.1%, which has also been surpassed by Tesla's data for the same period (28.4%). However, from the perspective of sales scale, the new forces do not even reach the "zero" of traditional car companies. In 2021, Tesla delivered 936,000 vehicles worldwide, and the delivery scale of "Wei Xiaoli" was even smaller, delivering 91,000 vehicles, 98,000 vehicles and 90,000 vehicles respectively, all of which did not break through the "100,000 vehicles" mark.
In contrast, in 2021, Toyota motor sold 10.5 million new cars worldwide, more than ten times more than Tesla; Volkswagen Group sold 8.9 million vehicles worldwide, and Ford motor vehicles sold 3.942 million vehicles in the whole year, all of which are unattainable by new forces. Among the autonomous car companies, Changan Automobile will sell 2.3 million units in 2021, Geely Automobile will sell 1.328 million units, Great Wall Motor will sell 1.281 million units, and BYD's annual sales will reach 730,000 units. Zhu Rong told Future Auto Daily that gross profit margin is the most intuitive indicator of the profitability of a business or product, but this data cannot directly reflect the operating conditions of a company.
New car companies are in the growth period of enterprises. For such companies, investors are relatively "tolerant" and will pay more attention to the indicator of gross profit margin, and relatively less concerned about net profit. "Losses are also acceptable, and investors are more concerned about its growth." Taking NIO As an example, in August 2020, NIO announced that the gross profit margin in the second quarter of that year turned from negative to positive, which was seen as a milestone and played a key role in the subsequent increase in its stock price.
Source: Google Finance
For mature companies such as traditional car companies, investors pay more attention to core data such as sales volume, profitability, and return on investment.
Zhu Rong said that sometimes a company's high gross profit margin does not reflect its strong profitability, because "the high gross profit margin also depends on the specific reasons, and sometimes the cost reduction will make the gross profit margin number 'look good'." But that's not a good thing for automakers.
For example, in the first half of 2020, only a few independent car companies achieved a gross profit margin increase, among which Lifan Automobile and Haima Automobile appeared. However, the increase in gross profit margins of these two car companies was due to a sharp decline in costs. During the reporting period, Lifan Automobile and Haima Automobile sold only 1500 vehicles and 6500 vehicles. Correspondingly, Lifan Automobile's operating income was 1.58 billion yuan, down 69.42% year-on-year; operating costs were 1.43 billion yuan, down 70.81% year-on-year; Haima Automobile's operating income was 1.311 billion yuan, down 43.54% year-on-year; operating costs were 1.21 billion yuan, down 48.75% year-on-year. "Perhaps it's because production is too low that production and operating costs are falling." The above-mentioned person analyzed it.
Why are new forces with higher gross margins?
Cost and pricing are the main factors that determine the level of gross profit margin, Liu Fan, an investor in the automotive industry, told Future Auto Daily.
From the perspective of pricing range, the price of new forces is generally higher than that of traditional car companies. At present, tesla's two mainstream models Model 3 and Model Y are priced in the range of 265,700-387,900 yuan. Among the "Wei Xiaoli", Weilai has the highest pricing, with the current pricing range of 328,000-566,000 yuan for the models on sale; the ideal car only has 2,021 ideal ONE models on sale, priced at 338,000 yuan; Xiaopeng Automobile's pricing range is slightly lower, between 154,600 and 367,900 yuan, but its main sales model Xiaopeng P7 (accounting for 62% of sales in 2021) is not low, between 224,200 and 367,900 yuan.
Source: Xiaopeng Motors official
Officially, the price range of traditional car companies is relatively low. Toyota, Changan, Geely, Great Wall and other traditional car companies, many models of the manufacturer guidance price is less than 100,000 yuan. According to Wilson data, from January to July 2021, the average selling price of Volkswagen was 147,800 yuan, and the average selling price of BYD was 151,800 yuan, both lower than the pricing range of new cars.
New cars are different from the main sales models of traditional car companies, new cars are mainly electric vehicles, and the main force of traditional car companies is still fuel vehicles. From the cost point of view, although the cost of electric vehicles is generally higher than that of fuel vehicles, the price of battery packs, which accounts for the majority of them, is declining year by year. According to data from Tianfeng Securities Research Report, Tesla's battery cost was about $154/kWh in 2019, and by the first two quarters of 2020, its battery cost had dropped to $138/kWh.
Moreover, the 4680 battery manufactured by Panasonic for Tesla is also about to usher in mass production, "(after the application of the 4680 battery) in terms of manufacturing and assembly, the cost is 86% lower than before", Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed. Based on the downward exploration of battery costs, Tianfeng Securities predicts that tesla's cost on the battery side will still have room for decline of $4,000 / vehicle in the future. This offsets some of the cost disadvantages of new cars.
From the perspective of development costs, new car companies have an advantage. "Compared with fuel vehicles, the development difficulty and time cost of electric vehicles are lower", an auto industry insider told Future Auto Daily, from the perspective of the most basic components, "the three major parts of different fuel models (engine, chassis, transmission) are completely different, and the development of a new car requires the redevelopment of three major parts", but the three electric vehicle systems can be universal, which greatly shortens the development time and reduces the development cost.
In addition to the above two aspects, there are more ways to make money for new cars. Liu Fan told Future Auto Daily that the software service revenue of new cars is also the reason for its generally higher gross profit margin.
Source: Unsplash
Tesla has taken the lead in grabbing the first pot of gold in the software business. For the full year of 2021, Tesla's services and other businesses, including autopilot software, achieved operating revenue of $3.802 billion, an increase of 65%, accounting for 7.1% of total revenue. At the earnings conference, Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn admitted: "The software business will be the focus of profitability in the future, because the profit margin of the software business is very high. ”
The most "noisy" self-driving Xiaopeng Automobile, the most "noisy" new forces in China, has also begun to make profits from the software level. The latest data shows that in the first quarter of 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's software business revenue reached 80 million yuan. Liu Fan believes that as the scale of delivery continues to expand and the revenue of software services increases, the gross profit margin of the new forces may be further improved. (Some of the characters in the article are pseudonyms)
The author | Ding unique
Edit the | Li Huanhuan