After a series of twists and turns, Weilai finally realized his dream.
On the morning of March 10, NIO officially landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and class A ordinary shares were traded in units of 10 shares per lot, with the stock code "9866". The opening price is HK$160 per share, and as of now, NIO's market capitalization is HK$265.539 billion.
At this point, China's new car-making force "Wei Xiaoli" officially met in hong Kong stocks. Unlike Xiaopeng and Ideal, which were previously listed on Hong Kong stocks, Weilai opened high on the first day of listing, rising by more than 6% at one point.
From the first "Big Brother" to go public in the United States to the last player to return to Hong Kong today, Weilai's second listing road can be described as a twist and turn. The listing of NIO also adopted the method of introducing the listing, and did not involve the issuance of new shares and the raising of funds.
The original shareholding structure remains unchanged. Among them, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, actually holds 10.6% of the shares and has 39% of the voting rights; the second largest shareholder, Tencent, holds 9.8% of the shares and has 17.4% of the voting rights; and the third largest shareholder, The British investment institution Baillie Gifford & Co, holds 6.5% of the shares and has 3.5% of the voting rights.
At the same time, NIO is also looking for the possibility of entering other capital markets. It mentioned in the prospectus that the company has applied for listing on the main board of the Singapore Exchange in an introductory manner, and the specific listing date is under review. That is to say, in addition to U.S. stocks and Hong Kong stocks, WEILAI may become the first car company to be listed in the three places.
Putting aside the joy of listing, the past year, Weilai has not had an easy time. Under the multiple pressures of production capacity and supply chain, Weilai's sales have declined for several months, and even fell out of the first camp of new cars. In 2022, can weilai, which has three cars in unison, still find the glory of a brother?
Listing is not for money, is Weilai short of money in the end?
Judging from the rhythm of the secondary listing, Weilai can be described as getting up early in the morning but catching up with a late set. From the US stock market to the Hong Kong stock market, Xiaopeng and Ideal only took about a year. Weilai founder Li Bin released the signal of domestic IPO as early as the 2020 Q1 earnings call, and now it has finally been realized.
On the way to Weilai's IPO in Hong Kong, many sources pointed out that the trust fund "dragged its feet".
In January 2019, Li Bin, the founder of NIO, took out 50 million shares of NIO shares to establish a user trust fund and handed over the right to dispose of the proceeds to the user. Private equity fund researcher Tao Zheng analyzed the future auto daily, "The concept of user trust is relatively new, and it may be considered that WEILAI is transferring wealth, so the regulatory authorities need to further understand the business." ”
In 2021, with Xiaopeng and Ideal successively meeting in Hong Kong stocks, Weilai has also accelerated its pace. Under the premise that the general direction remains unchanged, Weilai began to seek a more flexible way. According to the listing documents, the stock markets of Hong Kong and the United States can attract different investors, and choosing the introduction method to achieve a secondary listing is "appropriate and beneficial" for NIO. ”
Compared with the listing of Xiaopeng and Ideal Offering IPO financing, the "introduction method listing" process chosen by WEIlai is simpler and the time is relatively shorter. A CFO of a retail company told Future Auto Daily that although the listing will not sell new shares at the beginning of the listing, "but because the original part of the shares can be listed for the second time, it does not involve the doubtful part of the shares, so it takes only about two months from the table to the listing." ”
However, everbright securities investment bankers pointed out that after the listing, Weilai can still issue shares to raise funds according to its own needs. "The refinancing of listed companies in the Hong Kong stock market is relatively relaxed, as long as it meets the regulations and investors are willing to give money, it can generally be facilitated."
Behind the urgent completion of the secondary listing, there are also considerations for Wei to avoid the risks of US stocks. Since the beginning of the year, risk events such as geopolitical crisis, Fed interest rate hikes and the epidemic have continued to exacerbate market volatility, and the NASDAQ index has fallen by more than 15%. Compared with the stock price of more than $60 in January 2021, Nio's US stock price plummeted by nearly 70%.
In the view of Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Orwell Consulting, the current geopolitical environment is grim, resulting in companies such as "Wei Xiaoli" beginning to move towards China, "and Hong Kong stocks will be a good transition." ”
In the prospectus, WEILAI said that its return to Hong Kong for listing is to provide investors with more trading location options and more flexible trading hours, "which will help introduce more investors and be beneficial to the company's long-term development." At the same time, Weilai also stressed that the company currently has sufficient cash reserves and has no urgent financing needs in the short term.
To this end, NIO also disclosed its current funding position, as of September 30, 2021, NIO's cash reserves totaled about 47 billion yuan. In November of the same year, NIO also raised about HK$15.6 billion through the AT-The-Market Offering. This figure is comparable to the amount of funds raised by Xiaopeng and Ideal in Hong Kong, which is HK$14 billion and HK$11.8 billion respectively.
Source: Future Automotive Daily
This means that NIO currently has sufficient cash reserves of nearly 60 billion yuan. Compared with the ideal and Xiaopeng, the current cash flow of Weilai does have certain advantages. According to the financial report, as of the end of September 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's cash and short-term investments were about 45.36 billion yuan. At the end of 2021, Ideal Auto's cash and short-term investments were about 50.16 billion.
However, from the perspective of spending efficiency, Weilai, which is now "big and big", obviously needs sufficient financial support.
According to the financial report, from 2016 to 2020, WEILAI's losses were 3.5 billion, 7.6 billion, 23.3 billion, 11.4 billion and 5.6 billion, respectively, and continued to lose 8.4 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2021. This means that from 2016 to the end of the third quarter of 2021, Weilai's cumulative loss has reached 60 billion yuan.
For Weilai, which has experienced a near-rupture in the capital chain, it is undoubtedly necessary to "accumulate grain" as much as possible before it has truly achieved profitability.
In 2022, new cars have also begun to produce new cards. Nio will start the "product year" with three products, which will deliver the high-end coupe ET7 and the mid-size sedan ET5 in March and September, and will also deliver the ES7 within the year. Behind the push of new products, from the scale of the supply chain, delivery to marketing, after-sales, every link means that capital investment will rise sharply.
In order to increase sales, companies are still competing in energy efficiency, and Weilai's route and positioning also determine the scale of its investment. Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of WEILAI, once said bluntly, "In 2022, we must maintain a relatively high rhythm of infrastructure investment."
In terms of substations, NIO plans to build at least 600 in 2022. "The replacement station must have batteries and corresponding equipment." A battery industry practitioner calculated an account, usually a 60 kilowatt battery price of about 90,000 yuan, "a substation needs at least 5-8 batteries, which means that the cost of photovoltaic cells is five or six hundred thousand." ”
In addition, WEILAI is also speeding up the speed of opening stores. According to Qin Lihong, THIS YEAR WEILAI WILL OPEN MORE THAN 100 NIO Houses. Overseas business and cross-border mobile phone manufacturing also require large investment.
Can Big Brother get back on the crown?
Relying on services comparable to Haidilao, WEILAI has gained many loyal users and embarked on the position of the top of the new car sales. The leading position was broken in 2021, and the crown throne not only changed hands, but Also Weilai's sales continued to decline, even falling out of the first camp.
In July 2021, WEIO's delivery volume lost its monthly sales crown for the first time, and in August it fell out of the top three, and in October, NIO only delivered 3667 vehicles. In 2021, WEILAI's total delivery volume of 91,429 vehicles retreated to second place, which was less than 1,000 vehicles away from the ideal of third place, and was overtaken by Xiaopeng by nearly 7,000 vehicles.
From the product point of view, in 2021, WEILAI is in the product window period, and the "youngest" EC6 of the three models on sale also began to be delivered as early as September 2020. Xiaopeng released two new models P5 and G9 in the same year, and the ideal only model, the ideal ONE, also underwent a medium-term minor modification.
The solution given by Weilai is to launch a new model that is more cost-effective to save the field.
According to the plan, in 2022, NIO will launch three new cars based on the NT2.0 technology platform, of which ET7 will start delivery on March 28, and ET5 will also be officially delivered in September. In addition, the new ES7 will also be officially released this year.
NIO ET5 Source: NIO official
Among them, the price of ET5 after using the battery rental scheme is as low as 258,000 yuan, which is also the first time that Weilai has touched the price range of 250,000 yuan, and it is also regarded as a model that implements Weilai's volume strategy.
Judging from the initial performance, this may become a key turning point in the increase in Sales of Weilai. At NIO Day in 2021, Li Bin revealed that ET5 was the largest product in the same period of WEILAI's history, and the influx of orders once paralyzed the Weilai App for 10 minutes. According to the official introduction, the pre-sale of the car has exceeded 100,000 units.
Guosheng Securities expects that if WEIlai can stand at the high end and successfully explore at the same time, its delivery volume in 2025 is expected to reach 500,000 vehicles.
However, in the case that the entire industry is suffering from the supply chain, Weilai's delivery is also facing no small test. Qin Lihong once helplessly said that this year's delivery target depends on the supply chain, which can only be "how much to produce".
It is expected that with the commissioning of the new plant in Hefei Xinqiao, THE DELIVERY of WEILAI will go up to a large level. On November 24, 2021, the first batch of process equipment of NeoPark's first factory and the second production base of NIO entered the site and started installation, and the first car will complete the trial production line of the whole process production line in Q2 2022, and the Q3 will be officially mass-produced.
Externally, Weilai is also facing greater competitive pressure.
If it is said that the respective main sales models of "Wei Xiaoli" before, whether it is product positioning or price, there are obvious differences, and there is no real sense of head-to-head confrontation. Then from the perspective of the new car planning of the three companies this year, with the weilai downward, xiaopeng and ideal upward, the weilai ES7, the ideal X01 and the xiaopeng G9 will also enter the same track.
Whether it is the product strength or the gap between the sales performance of the past companies, it is foreseeable that this is undoubtedly an uphill battle.
The advantage of NIO is that in addition to the consistent sense of luxury and high-end positioning, as well as the service system, as a model based on the NT2.0 technology platform, NIO has further improved in terms of intelligence, and the latest NAD automatic driving assistance system will usher in a head-on competition with Xiaopeng XPILOT 4.0.
It's just that when the combat effectiveness of all players has improved, for Weilai, returning to the position of "one brother" is obstructive and long.
The author | Wu Xiaoyu
Edit the | Wang Yan