Introduction:Great Wall Motor (601633. SH), from a township enterprise to become the first echelon of independent car companies, and the birth of 5 brands, 3 new energy technology routes, it is worth affirming. But did it become a regular on the complaint list because it ran too fast and did not pay attention to its feet? However, Great Wall Motors can't stop now - in the context of the continuous rise in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, fuel vehicles account for the majority of it, there is no way back.
"Euler is a good cat, the car that bullies women the most", "Women's money is really good to cheat", "Euler, you grow a little 'core'"... These are the "cries" from the owners of Euler.com.
Euler, Great Wall Motors (601633. SH) is a brand that was originally positioned as "the world's most woman-loving car brand", but now it has become "a car that will bully women", which is lamentable. Euler's owner's complaint stemmed from "the chip is inconsistent with the propaganda."
Since the fourth quarter of 2021, some Euler owners have reported that the "good cat" model they purchased has serious problems such as car jamming, inability to install applications, CarPlay cannot be connected, mobile phone voice playback is silent, and even the map and reversing image functions cannot be used normally. The owner then found that the vehicle chip was a 4-core Intel A3940 car machine chip released in 2016, not the newly released Qualcomm 8-core high-performance 8155 car machine chip.
Euler Good Cat Actual Test Chip: 4-core Intel A3940 Image Source Network
Cai Entropy noted that in recent months, great wall motors have ranked among the top in the number of car complaints counted by China Automobile Consumption Network.
November 2021 - February 2022 Automobile Complaint List Source: China Automobile Consumption Network Financial Entropy Charting
Among the many models complained about by Great Wall Motors, Euler Good Cat "topped" the list in November and December 2021. The main complaint problem is "the chip is not in line with the propaganda".
Great Wall Motor's "National God Car" Haval H6 is a frequent visitor to the complaint list, mainly "the new car cannot start, the steering system fails", "the car engine navigation version is low, and the B-pillar is abnormal". According to a car owner of the black cat complaint network, the third-generation Haval H6 he bought in December 2020 has never been updated after buying the car, often crashes, and there are problems such as incorrect route planning.
Haval H6 complaint Image source Black Cat Complaint Network
China's roads are developing rapidly, and the map will not be updated for a long time will bring inconvenience to travel. Updating the map is a very simple thing, but the Haval H6 has been delayed in solving, which is a bit unreasonable.
Not only Haval H6, Euler Good Cat, Cai Entropy learned that even WEY, a high-end brand under Great Wall Motors, has a number of quality problems. A VV5 owner reported that the new car was less than a year old to maintain, and there was a serious oil leakage in the gearbox; a VV7 owner reported that the engine was shaking when the car was idle, and there would be occasional stalls, and the throttle was not accelerated during driving.
Interestingly, in the CCTV "Dialogue" program in March 2019, Gree Electric Appliances (000651. Dong Mingzhu, chairman of SZ), said that "China's cars are a bit shoddy." Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, was not convinced, and shouted Dong Mingzhu over the air: "The manufacturing level of China's automobile industry has taken a leading position in the world" and "there is time to come to the Great Wall to turn around".
From a township enterprise to the first echelon of independent car companies, the development of Great Wall Motors is worthy of recognition. But Wei Jianjun's self-confidence in shouting in the air seemed to be contrary to reality. 30 years of car manufacturing, from focusing on SUVs to dispersing multiple brands, also makes Great Wall Motors look a little tired.
The "counterattack" of a township enterprise
Wei Jianjun was born in 1964 in Baoding, Hebei Province. In July 1990, at the age of 26, he was "ordered to be in danger" and contracted the Great Wall Industry from the Nandayuan Township government. This is the predecessor of Great Wall Motors. At that time, the Great Wall Industry was in debt of 2 million yuan, and it was not an exaggeration to describe it as "a mess".
When Wei Jianjun took over the Great Wall Industry, he had not yet built a car, and the company was mainly engaged in the car modification business. In 1993, Wei Jianjun entered the car industry and built the Great Wall car through the purchase of an external chassis. Due to the low price, the Great Wall car is all the rage. However, in 1994, the state stipulated that automobile production should be managed by the "catalog system", and the cars "cobbled together" by the Great Wall could not be listed, so Wei Jianjun had to stop the car project.
After the car was blocked, Wei Jianjun, who had insight into the development potential of pickup trucks, resolutely led the Great Wall to enter the leather market. In 1996, after the first pickup truck of the Great Wall "Deere" rolled off the production line, nearly 10,000 pickup trucks were produced within three years, becoming the leading pickup truck manufacturer in China.
On the basis of maintaining the leading position in the pickup truck market, Wei Jianjun has focused its corporate strategy on SUVs. In 2002, Great Wall Motor launched China's first economical SUV, the Sever. Once launched, it became the top three in the national SUV sales that year; the following year, Great Wall Motors won the chinese pickup truck and SUV double champion for the first time. At this time, Great Wall's pickup truck has been the first in sales in the Chinese market for 6 consecutive years.
In 2011, Great Wall Motors launched the Haval H6, which kicked off the Haval "myth" - from 2011 to 2021, the Haval H6 became the champion of SUV sales in China for 11 consecutive years. The Haval brand became independent in 2013. So far, great wall has two brands, "Great Wall Pickup Truck" and "Haval".
Haval H6 Source Network
Haval is positioned as an affordable car with a focus on cost performance. But even if Haval sells well, it is difficult to get rid of the embarrassment of "exchanging price for volume" as an independent brand.
Perhaps to get rid of the "cheap" label, on November 16, 2016, Great Wall Motors released a brand new brand - WEY (Chinese "Wei Brand"). The brand that made Wei Jianjun bet on his surname is positioned in China's luxury SUVs.
WEY VV7 Graph Source Network
WEY has successively launched VV7, VV5, VV6, P8 and other models, becoming the first Chinese luxury SUV brand to achieve the fastest sales of 300,000. Perhaps it is the "tank" model under WEY that accidentally became popular, making Wei Jianjun feel that the tank is too sharp and will weaken the brand influence of WEY. So in April 2021, "Tank" officially became independent and became a new brand under the Great Wall.
Tank 300 Figure Source Network
On February 19, 2017, Wei Jianjun publicly stated at the Haval Million Units Celebration Conference that "SUVs will not be the first in the world and will not launch cars." However, on April 12, 2021, Li Ruifeng, vice president of Great Wall Motors and general manager of the WEY brand, announced that Great Wall has restarted the car project and related models will be placed under the WEY brand.
In fact, in recent years, Great Wall Motors' strategy has long been adjusted, from focusing on SUVs to expanding different consumer groups. In 2018, the Great Wall set its sights on women, and in April of that year, it launched a pure electric vehicle brand - Euler.
Euler is positioned as "the world's most woman-loving car brand". Relying on the "cat", a carrier loved by female consumers, it has successively launched models such as "black cat", "white cat" and "good cat". The naming methods of Euler's body "high heel red", "forgive green" and "ten thousand meters" are also quite popular.
Euler Good Cat Image Source Network
The appearance of Euler has made the female driver who was once ridiculed for her driving skills have a feeling of being "pampered". It has been loved by female consumers since its birth, with sales of 38,800 units, 56,200 units and 135,000 units in 2019-2021, respectively. From its birth to its annual sales of more than 100,000, Euler took less than four years.
At present, Great Wall Motors has five brand car series of Haval, Pickup, WEY, Euler and Tank. In 2016, Great Wall became the second enterprise with annual sales of independent brands to exceed one million, and entered the first camp of domestic car companies. Judging from the development history of the Great Wall in the past 30 years, it has been running non-stop, but it seems that it has not paid much attention to its feet.
Veterans are weak and structural transformation is urgent
Although Great Wall Motors has been developing at a high speed, its sales have been maintained at about 1.07 million units for five years from 2015 to 2020, and its growth has stagnated. Although the sales of the Great Wall rose to 1.28 million units in 2021, Cai Entropy found that the sales of the Great Wall fell by about 20% year-on-year from January to February this year, of which the largest decline was in pickup trucks, down as much as 34.48% year-on-year.
As a "national god car", Haval's sales began to decline after reaching a peak of 938,000 units in 2016, and remained at about 770,000 units from 2018 to 2021, and even fell by 27.85% year-on-year from January to February this year.
Total sales of Haval and Great Wall Motors from 2015 to 2021
Source: Company Announcement Financial Entropy Tabulation
As can be seen from the sales structure, most of Great Wall Motors' revenue comes from Haval – in 2016, Haval's sales even accounted for 87.3% of Great Wall's total sales. It can be said that the Great Wall is "a hav, a defeat hav".
However, Haval is a "regular" on the car complaint list, and even the simple problem of navigation maps has not been solved for a long time. When Great Wall Motors aggressively expands and develops other brands, it seems to be less concerned about the veteran's "optimization". This may be one reason why Haval's sales have not increased but declined.
In addition, many Haval owners reported that the fuel consumption of the vehicle was too large. Zhang Xiang, an analyst in the automotive industry, also told Cai Entropy, "Haval SUV has a relatively large fuel consumption and produces more negative integrals. "In addition, Haval is an older car, the shape is older, consumers are slowly choosing other brands, and the innovation of the car is very important."
WEY, which is positioned as a luxury SUV, was born in 2016, and its sales reached 86,000 units in 2017, and continued to soar in 2018, with sales of nearly 140,000 units. At the ceremony to celebrate the third anniversary of the WEY brand held on November 20, 2019, Wei Jianjun was full of enthusiasm: "The WEY brand has formulated a globalization strategy promotion schedule to achieve a direct challenge to the traditional giant BBA on the new energy track. ”
However, WEY has since been "dud", and after 2018, sales began to decline gradually, and by 2021, there are less than 60,000 vehicles, and there is a feeling of "debut is the peak soon". Although Great Wall Motors has tilted a lot of resources to come over, WEY is still blocked in the high-end route, and the newly released "coffee combination" - Mocha, Macchiato, latte, follow-up performance also needs to be questioned.
Although Euler sold 135,000 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 141% year-on-year, black and white cats have stopped taking orders in February this year due to subsidies and rising raw materials. Euler officials said that the black cat will lose ten thousand yuan when selling one.
Cai Entropy learned that in 2021, the sales volume of Euler black cats will be 69,000 vehicles, and the sales of white cats will be 19,000 vehicles, and the sales of the two models will account for about 65% of Euler's total sales in 2021. If the black cat and the white cat cannot take orders for a long time, the impact on Euler's sales is still relatively large.
The high-end good cat is still selling, but it is deeply involved in the "chip door" storm. In this regard, Euler officially gave a plan to upgrade the OTA function in the first response, but it was not recognized by consumers. In desperation, Euler officially came forward for the second time and admitted the mistake, saying that the Qualcomm 8-core chip was to be mounted on the future model, and further gave a compensation plan. However, in the eyes of many consumers, Euler's practice of "stealing beams and changing columns" has hurt the hearts of the majority of female car owners.
Euler apologizes for the source network
Black cats and white cats stop taking orders, and good cats encounter a crisis of trust, which makes Euler's situation seem a little confusing. Anyway, at least Euler's sales this year will be affected.
Like black cats and white cats, Tank 300 has also stopped taking orders, but it is caused by "short supply". In 2021, tanks contributed 84,600 sales to Great Wall Motors, accounting for more than 50% of China's off-road vehicle market share, and sales in January-February this year increased by 80.63% year-on-year. It can be said that tanks are an important "incremental responsibility" of Great Wall Motors.
Great Wall Motors' five brands, pickup trucks, Haval, and WEY, have declined; Euler has stopped taking orders and encountered a crisis of trust; only tanks are "like the sun in the sky", but the volume is small, and its sales in the Great Wall Group in 2021 account for only 6.6%.
Detached from the brand, from the perspective of sales structure, Great Wall Motors' problems are not small.
In 2021, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has increased from about 5% at the beginning of the year to more than 20% at the end of the year, and will grow rapidly in the future. The Great Wall Motor is mainly fuel vehicles, accounting for 85% in 2021; pure electric Euler and hybrid WEY, the total sales volume in 2021 is less than 200,000 vehicles, accounting for only about 15%. The proportion of new energy vehicles is small, and these two brands are currently experiencing some difficulties, which is not good for Great Wall Motors.
In the capital market, investors have long been "prophetic". After Great Wall Motor's stock price peaked at the end of October 2021, the stock was abandoned, and in less than five months, the stock price fell by nearly 60%, and the market value evaporated by 380 billion.
Great Wall Motor's stock price in the past six months is the source of Oriental Wealth
Burn one's boat
Many people think that Great Wall Motors' layout in the field of new energy is relatively late, in fact, it has taken precautions in 2012 and carried out pre-research work on power battery cells. At that time, the Ningde era (300750. SZ) is only a year old.
Unfortunately, Wei Jianjun did not put too much thought into the power battery, until 2016, when the battery division was established, that is, the predecessor of Honeycomb Energy, officially cut into the power battery track, which was "up early in the morning and caught up with a late set".
Hive Energy has become a "dark horse" on the power battery track in China and even the world. Public data shows that in 2021, the installed capacity of Honeycomb Energy in power batteries will be 3.22 GWh, the sixth in China and the tenth in the world. Despite the Ningde era, BYD (002594. SZ) There is still a big gap between these giants, but the honeycomb energy growth rate is very fast, becoming the "darling" of capital pursuit, since 2021 has completed three rounds of financing, the total financing scale of nearly 20 billion yuan, the current valuation reached 26 billion yuan, and planned to be listed on the science and technology innovation board.
However, in October 2018, Great Wall Motor transferred 100% of its shares in Hive Energy to Baoding Ruimao Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd. through an agreement transfer. At this point, the honeycomb energy was stripped from Great Wall Motors and transferred to Wei Jianjun's name.
Although it was spun off, Hive Energy and Great Wall Motors are considered "brothers". At least in terms of power batteries, Great Wall Motors has a certain right to speak.
Like the group's brand diversification, Great Wall Motors is also a multi-line layout in the field of new energy, in addition to pure electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and hydrogen fuel vehicles. "For China, hydrogen fuel is very important because it is not as simple as powering the means of transportation, but more of a concept of a hydrogen society." Wei Jianjun once explained hydrogen-fueled vehicles this way.
In the field of hydrogen energy, Great Wall Motors has been in the process of development for five years. In 2016, the "XEV" project team was formed, the predecessor of Untax Energy. At present, the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle engine independently developed by Great Wall has reached the domestic leading performance index, and has 100% intellectual property rights and parts localization rate.
In Wei Jianjun's planning, Great Wall Motor's hydrogen fuel vehicle technology research and development center is not only to manufacture hydrogen fuel vehicles, but to build a professional hydrogen fuel power system and become a supplier of hydrogen fuel power system. On March 29, 2021, Great Wall held a hydrogen energy strategy conference and released its self-developed vehicle-grade "hydrogen power system" solution - hydrogen lemon technology. Great Wall is currently the only car company in China that has realized the core technology layout of the whole hydrogen energy industry chain.
For the future development of hydrogen energy vehicles, zhang Xiang, an analyst in the automotive industry, told Cai Entropy, "The development of hydrogen energy vehicles will not be as fast as lithium batteries." At present, the cost of hydrogen production is relatively high, and it is mainly the use of coal to produce hydrogen, which will release a large amount of carbon dioxide, the infrastructure is not perfect, and the resistance to the development of hydrogen energy is still relatively large. Hydrogen energy vehicle sales in 2021 are less than 10,000, and there is still a long way to go. In the long run, it can only be used as an auxiliary form of new energy vehicles. ”
It can be seen that whether it is brand strategy or new energy layout, Great Wall Motors is running. But cars belong to the asset-heavy industry, and running all the way seems to have made the Great Wall look a little tired.
Cai entropy found that Great Wall Motor's asset-liability ratio has been rising in recent years, from 46.62% in 2015 to 64.63% in the third quarter of 2021. The increase in the asset-liability ratio is mainly due to the increase in interest-bearing liabilities, of which long-term borrowings increased from about 50 million yuan in 2015 to 12.2 billion yuan in the third quarter of 2021 year by year. To further invest, Great Wall issued 3.5 billion yuan of convertible bonds in June 2021.
Great Wall Motor 2015-2021Q3 asset-liability ratio Source: Company Financial Report Financial Entropy Mapping
From the perspective of inventory turnover days, it has also gradually lengthened in recent years, from 24.03 days in 2015 to 36.34 days in the third quarter of 2021. The lengthening of inventory turnover days means that the rate of realization of goods is slower.
At the same time, Great Wall Motor's gross profit margin and net profit margin in recent years are also declining: the gross profit margin has dropped from 25.13% in 2015 to 16.58% in the third quarter of 2021; while in the same period, the net profit margin has dropped from 10.61% to 5.45%, and cost control needs to be improved.
Even so, Great Wall Motors, which is already slightly tired, plans to continue to run wildly.
On June 28, 2021, Great Wall Motor officially released its 2025 strategy - by 2025, it will achieve annual global sales of 4 million vehicles, of which 80% are new energy vehicles; operating income exceeds 600 billion yuan; and in the next five years, the cumulative R & D investment will reach 100 billion yuan.
In 2021, Great Wall Motors will sell 1.28 million units, of which less than 200,000 are new energy vehicles. Wei Jianjun's goal is ambitious, but at the same time, his anxiety can be seen - according to this goal, new energy vehicle sales will exceed 3 million in 2025. Perhaps he also realized that if the new energy vehicle does not exert force, it will be too late.
On July 13, 2020, in the 30 years of Great Wall Motors, he realized the special movie - "Can Great Wall Motors Survive Next Year?" In the book, Wei Jianjun said, "I hope that the future Great Wall Motors is changing, using thirty years of accumulation to meet the great changes at this moment, and when the life of the enterprise is hanging on the line, it will also hang its own life on it." I think this is the 'sincerity' that enterprises should have, there is no way out, only to see the way out. ”
Under the background of the continuous increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, the development of new energy vehicles will affect the fate of car companies to a certain extent, especially for Great Wall Motors, which accounts for the majority of fuel vehicles.
The Great Wall, the "National God Car", really has no way back.