Core Intelligent Driving -- A collection of the views of famous experts in production, education, research and enterprises, a comprehensive analysis of THE opportunities and challenges of AI chips, third-generation semiconductors and other opportunities and challenges in the era of "great deformation" of automobiles!
Jiwei network news, under the leadership of BYD and Tesla, since the second half of 2021, many new car-making forces in China, including Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, Nezha, etc., have achieved monthly delivery of "over 10,000", and with the continuous growth of automobile sales, the new car-making forces are getting closer and closer to the goal of "profitability".
Recently, the ideal disclosed 2021 annual performance report shows that although the year is still in a state of loss, it has achieved profitability in the fourth quarter, with a net profit of 295.5 million yuan; in fact, this is the second consecutive year that the ideal has achieved profitability in Q4. However, the ideal breakthrough does not mean that the new forces of head car manufacturing are about to usher in collective profits. According to the analysis of Ping An Securities, the annual revenue scale of 80 billion yuan will become the break-even point of the new car-making forces, corresponding to the sales target of 200,000-400,000 vehicles; according to this analysis, some new car-making forces are expected to achieve profitability this year.
Ideal Q4 is profitable again under the industry boom
When the new car-making forces will be profitable has always been a concern of the industry, but in the process of development, the new car-making forces are more obsessed with how to increase their sales scale.
Previously, whether it is a new car-making force or a traditional main engine factory, the unified view is that the future domestic surviving new energy vehicle brands are about 10 or less, and eventually there may be only 3-5, which brings great pressure to the new car-making forces, and it is inevitable to enhance technical strength, increase automobile production and delivery.
The good news is that with the outbreak of the domestic new energy vehicle market, since the second half of 2021, the new domestic head car-making forces have achieved the goal of more than 10,000 monthly deliveries and successfully crossed the first hurdle of "scale". In September 2021, Weilai and Xiaopeng took the lead in "breaking 10,000", and since then, monthly deliveries of more than 10,000 have gradually become the norm, and Ideal and Nezha have also joined the club.
With the continuous improvement of monthly automobile deliveries, the performance of new car-making forces is also gradually improving. According to public data, the annual revenue of Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal in 2020 was 16.258 billion yuan, 5.844 billion yuan and 9.457 billion yuan respectively; in 2021, benefiting from the industry boom, in the first three quarters, the revenue of each enterprise increased significantly year-on-year.
Among them, WEILAI's revenue in the first three quarters increased by 481.8%, 127.2% and 102.4% respectively year-on-year, and the annual revenue is expected to increase by 120% to 35.611 billion yuan to 36.34 billion yuan. Xiaopeng's revenue in the first three quarters increased by 616.1%, 536.7% and 187.40% respectively year-on-year, and it is expected that the annual revenue will be 19.531 billion yuan to 19.931 billion yuan, and the annual growth rate will exceed 234%.
2021 revenue analysis of 3 new car-making forces (Source: Aijiwei)
As we all know, compared with Tesla, BYD and other leading sales companies, the new forces of local car manufacturing are still in the catch-up stage, the growth of revenue does not mean that the loss is turned into a profit, from the current public data, in the first three quarters of 2021, Weilai continues to be in a state of loss, a total loss of 2.206 billion yuan, a year-on-year performance of a significant narrowing; Xiaopeng sales have increased significantly, the performance has not achieved a turnaround, the first three quarters of the loss has expanded.
Profitability analysis of 3 new car-making forces in 2021 (Source: Aijiwei)
However, another new car-making force is ideal, and its latest disclosed fourth quarter performance report of 2021 shows that it achieved revenue of 10.62 billion yuan, an increase of 155.9% year-on-year, becoming the first enterprise in the new car-making force to break 10 billion yuan in a single quarter, with a total revenue of 27.014 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 185.65% year-on-year.
In terms of profitability, although Ideal still lost 321.5 million yuan in 2021, it has achieved a net profit of 295.5 million yuan in the fourth quarter. In fact, this is the second consecutive time that Ideal has achieved profitability in the fourth quarter, and in the same period of 2020, Ideal also turned a profit for the first time with 108 million yuan. Observing its performance in the four quarters of 2021, it also found that its loss decreased quarter by quarter, and by the third quarter, it was close to the edge of profitability.
Under the background of the large increase in monthly delivery volume, the ideal second degree of profit in Q4 and the loss of Weilai narrowed significantly, making the market more optimistic about the development prospects of new local car-making forces. Since the second half of last year, the three new car-making forces of Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng have all received a large number of overseas funds in the secondary market, including Tiger Global, the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Bureau, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and other well-known institutions.
Sales will increase greatly and profitable nodes will arrive
It is undeniable that the scale of production and sales is indeed amortizing the cost of bicycles, making the profit trend of new local car-making forces increasingly obvious. For example, in the first three quarters of 2018-2020 and 2021, its losses were 9.639 billion yuan, 11.2957 billion yuan, 5.3041 billion yuan and 2.206 billion yuan, respectively, and the overall narrowing trend was significantly narrowed; in the same reporting period, Xiaopeng was 1.399 billion yuan, 3.692 billion yuan, 2.732 billion yuan and 3.086 billion yuan, showing a fluctuating trend, but Northeast Securities analysis believes that this year and next year, Xiaopeng's loss margin will narrow to 2.115 billion yuan, respectively. 1.318 billion yuan.
For the ideal of achieving profitability for two consecutive Q4s, the trend of profitability is more obvious. From 2019 to 2021, its loss amount was 2.44 billion yuan, 151.7 million yuan and 320 million yuan respectively, and the overall trend was narrowing.
In the future, with the rapid increase in automobile delivery, the time node for the profitability of new car-making forces will accelerate. Ping An Securities comprehensively analyzes the factors of automobile sales, gross profit margin, R&D investment, and operating costs of various enterprises, and believes that "the annual revenue scale of 80 billion yuan is expected to be required for the new car-making forces to break even", and gives the corresponding automobile sales target of 200,000-400,000 vehicles per year.
Based on this, it is not difficult to analyze the profit schedule of the new car-making forces. Combined with Ping An Securities' conclusions, the author found that the car sales that it gave to reach breakeven were exactly the target sales of the three new car-making forces this year and next year. Combined with the disclosure data of various OEMs and CITIC Securities, WEILAI's sales target this year is about 200,000 vehicles; Xiaopeng guarantees 250,000 vehicles and sprints towards 300,000 vehicles; the ideal is expected to be about 150,000 vehicles.
It is estimated from this that the sales of Weilai and Xiaopeng in the new forces of head car manufacturing are expected to reach the sales range value required for breakeven this year, that is, the new car-making forces are expected to achieve their first annual profit as soon as this year.
However, the data is only a comprehensive forecast, in fact, the situation of each enterprise is different, and the profitability is also different.
Weilai, the ideal positioning of the high-end, the value of bicycles is relatively high, such as the average price of Weilai more than 400,000 yuan / vehicle, the ideal ONE unit price is also as high as 338,000 yuan / vehicle; at the same time, the gross profit margin of the two companies has been close to 20%, and Tesla, Great Wall Motors, BMW and other traditional OEMs are basically equivalent, when the sales volume of the year reaches more than 200,000 vehicles, the possibility of achieving profitability is greater.
Compared with Weilai, the ideal operating cost is lower, and it is profitable in Q4 2021 with 35,000 vehicles delivered, so once the sales target of 150,000 vehicles is achieved this year, it is also possible to achieve annual profitability.
However, the situation facing Xiaopeng may be more severe, it is positioned in the low-end market, the current gross profit margin of bicycles is slightly more than 10%; at the same time, the investment in the field of intelligence continues to increase, which also makes it face greater profit pressure. Industry experts said, "Low-end price models have no profits, or even losses, in the long run the competition is too fierce, must be through the brand up and the launch of more high-end models to drive profits." ”
It is worth noting that the recent suspension of the Black and White Cat models of the Great Wall's Euler brand also confirms this. It is understood that the Euler brand is positioned in the low-end market, the price ranges from 60,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan, Euler brand CEO Dong Yudong said, "Although there are advantages in the industrial chain behind the Euler brand, this fashionable and people-friendly car still brings huge losses to the company." Taking black cat as an example, after the sharp rise in raw material prices in 2022, black cats lost more than 10,000 yuan per unit. ”
The low-end price of Xiaopeng's G3 and P5 models is basically the same as that of Euler's high-end version, and under the low gross profit margin, Xiaopeng also faces the same problem of profitability, for which Xiaopeng said, "(G3 models) will gradually be marginalized in the future due to low prices and low profit points." ”
2022 profit forecast analysis of 3 new head car-making forces (source: Aijiwei)
Compared with future development, there are views in the industry that premature profitability of new car-making forces is not the best choice. "Unlike traditional OEMs with deep technical accumulation, they (referring to new car manufacturing forces) represent advanced technologies and cutting-edge applications, which require continuous research and development and innovation to achieve value." Once they make a profit prematurely, their technical reserves and future development potential will be questioned. Analyst Chen Lei (pseudonym) thinks.
Its main point of view is that, on the one hand, the traditional main engine factory to accelerate the transformation of electrification, while superimposing intelligent development, to the new forces of car manufacturing brings a very large competitive pressure, especially Tesla and BYD, the two industry-leading enterprises, technology and production and sales of rapid improvement, moat is getting higher and higher, in this context, the new car-making forces to survive, only to continuously enhance their own heritage.
In fact, new car-making forces have continued to increase research and development efforts, such as Q2 2021, WEILAI's R&D expenses increased by 62.1% year-on-year to 880 million yuan, Xiaopeng increased by 121.8% to 1.4 billion yuan, and the ideal also increased to 1.17 billion yuan. At the same time, intelligent driving is becoming a key research area for new forces in head car manufacturing, such as in the second half of 2021, WEILAI's automatic driving department plans to increase 300 to 800 people, and Xiaopeng plans to exceed 1500 people in autonomous driving research and development personnel.
On the other hand, compared with traditional OEMs, the production and sales scale of the new car-making forces is still small, and the impulse is still the primary target. In 2021, the car deliveries of the three new forces of head car manufacturing are between 90,000 and 100,000 vehicles, which is equivalent to Tesla's 2016-2017 level. Tesla's first annual profit was in 2020, when Tesla delivered nearly 500,000 cars throughout the year with the support of the Shanghai factory, far higher than the delivery scale of the new car-making forces in 2021 and this year's delivery target.
At the same time, the new car-making forces must also carry out the necessary sales and service network layout, which will also have a great impact on their performance. "At present, the new car-making forces are not eager to make profits, but to increase the scale of production and sales, and increase the layout for future development." Chen Lei said.
(Proofreader/James)