Introduction: At the beginning of this year, the stock price of new energy vehicles in the United States fell so rapidly, reflecting the uneasiness of the capital market about the unknown prospects of the new energy automobile industry. In the face of the bright future promised by science and technology and the cruel environment under the epidemic, the stock price of new energy vehicles will rise sharply in the future and fall sharply.
Since the beginning of the year, the stock price of new energy vehicles in the United States has continued to decline. Tesla shares fell by about 25%, Rivian fell by 43%, and Xiaopeng Motors, NIO and Ideal Automobile fell by about 32%, 33% and 14% respectively. The capital market is in mourning.
If it were not for the outbreak of the Crisis in Ukraine that led to a sharp rise in commodities, especially energy and oil prices, which would be good for new energy in this way, I am afraid that new energy vehicles would "squeeze the bubble".
1) New energy vehicle stocks are seriously overvalued?
When a sector that had previously soared suddenly suffered a series of declines, there was reason to suspect that its stock price was grossly overvalued in the pursuit of investors.
For the stock prices of listed companies in new energy vehicles, if we insist on understanding them from the perspective of financial indicators or automobile sales, then the conclusions reached may be a huge bubble. Although the track was chosen correctly, the valuation can not follow the traditional automobile industry, but there is no industry that will always maintain rapid growth.
In the capital market where electric vehicles are flocking, U.S. new energy vehicle stocks have begun a round of adjustment from the beginning of 2022 to the present. On the one hand, it is due to the early surge, capital blindly chased; on the other hand, it is related to the power of traditional automobile companies. Previously, Toyota Motor also hit a new high in stock price, while several companies specializing in new energy companies did the opposite. More importantly, Regions such as China have indicated that new energy subsidies for electric vehicles will be withdrawn.
Xiaopeng Motors, Ideal Auto, and Weilai Auto are currently in a state of loss, which will be more and more pressure on the new forces that have not yet developed well. At the same time, Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile, which returned to Hong Kong stocks, also fell below the issue price at one point. Tesla, the global champion in electric vehicle sales, has achieved a profitability, but the price-earnings ratio has also reached a frightening 143.08. Even Musk himself has half-joked that Tesla's stock price is overvalued.
In terms of sales, it is true that 2021 is indeed known as the year of the outbreak of new energy vehicles, and the penetration rate of New Energy Vehicles in China has expanded from 5.8% to 14.8%, and there is a trend of continued expansion, but the current sales of new energy sector car companies are probably not enough to match the current market value.
In 2021, the market value of Xiaopeng Motors is about 300 billion yuan, higher than SAIC's 240 billion yuan, but Xiaopeng Motors' sales last year were less than 100,000 vehicles, and SAIC Motor's sales were 5.46 million; Tesla's market value is almost equal to the sum of the other nine in the top 10 global car companies, but Tesla's global sales are 930,000, while Toyota, which ranks second in market capitalization, has reached 10.5 million.
To some extent, I am afraid that new energy vehicles will have to swallow up the market share of traditional cars in order to be worthy of the current stock price and valuation.
The capital market is obviously not using this logic to judge the new energy vehicle sector. This does make sense, the automotive industry itself is a strategic industry of the national economy, and new energy vehicles are also changing social and energy development through electric intelligence.
Whether it is from the perspective of energy structure, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, the author believes that the development potential of new energy vehicles is far from being tapped, and the valuation that far exceeds the current company value is reasonable in a sense, but this does not mean that it can be "asking for a price".
Whether it is a policy, or a supply chain that affects the development of new energy, raw materials and other issues, a little wind and grass will make this high-speed car rush off the track. Therefore, the new energy stock price will rise and fall sharply in the future, which is afraid to become the norm.
2) It's hard to close
The continuous decline in the stock price of new energy vehicles in the United States year-to-date may be because a series of bearish news has caused some investors to have fear.
First of all, the price of lithium batteries required for pure electric vehicles has skyrocketed.
To what extent? Yahua Group, one of the leading lithium battery companies in China, recently announced its first quarter performance forecast, which is expected to achieve a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 900 million to 1.2 billion yuan. In the past year, its net profit has also been more than 900 million yuan. That said, the company has already made the equivalent of the previous year in the first quarter of this year. As for the reason for the sharp profit, Yahua Group attributed it to "seizing the opportunity to sell lithium salt products".
The sharp rise in lithium batteries in the largest new energy vehicle market can be seen, not to mention other regions. Fastmarkets' assessment of the cif price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in Japan and South Korea was $58.5-63/kg, up $3.25/kg, on February 22, 2022, and the cif price of battery-grade lithium hydroxide in Japan and South Korea was $55.5-58.0/kg, up $3/kg month-on-month.
Second, there is a shortage of chip supply. Since the fourth quarter of 2020, there has been a shortage of chips worldwide, which will intensify in 2021. By 2022, due to the reduction of chip production in factories in Southeast Asia and other places due to the epidemic, and chip dealers taking the opportunity to hoard goods, it will lead to a total increase in the price of automotive chips. A core chip of the body electronic stability system produced by STMicroelectronics was actually fried from 20 yuan to 2800 yuan. For new energy vehicles, the number of semiconductors used in a vehicle is 4 to 5 times that of traditional cars.
The high price of chips has finally made car companies unable to stand up. On the 14th of Ting, the Euler brand of Great Wall Motor delivered a notice to the terminal that the black cat and the white cat would stop taking orders. One of the reasons for the suspension is because the price of the chip is too high, resulting in huge losses for the company. From this, we can also glimpse the huge side effects of the entire new energy automobile industry, which is extremely fast and extremely fast, and the lack of core and lack of electricity, and the soaring cost.
Finally, in addition to the supply chain suffered a heavy blow, new energy vehicle companies also have to face the competitive pressure brought by traditional car companies that are transforming to electric and technology giants that try to build cross-border cars.
At present, Tesla is trying to establish a European super project in Germany, and Ideal, Xiaopeng and Weilai are expanding production capacity in China, but the problem is that the "1.0 era" of new car-making forces has passed, and latecomers such as Nezha and Zero Run seem to be becoming new prey of capital, not to mention the "new species" created by traditional car giants.
Despite the difficulties, with the contradiction between Russia and Ukraine causing the price of traditional energy to rise, the new energy sector seems to see new hope. Whether they can seize the opportunity to reverse the decline, we will wait and see.