Power battery to catch up with the good times, it has become one of the most important power sources of global energy structure transformation, enterprises have "lithium" can go to the world.
When the market continues to talk about the aircraft carrier-level enterprises Ningde Times (300750.SZ) and the "slash youth" BYD (002594.SZ, 01211.HK), many people do not know an aggressive challenger - China Innovation Airlines (formerly known as "AVIC Lithium Battery").
At this time when the spring breeze is coming and the new energy vehicles are booming, China Innovation Airlines is about to let go again: it has opened the listing process. On March 11, China Innovation Shipping submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, sounding the gong of entering the capital market. If it is successfully listed in Hong Kong, China Innovation Airlines will gather in the capital market with lithium battery experts such as Ning Wang, BYD and Guoxuan Hi-Tech (002074.SZ) to divide this market cake.
It has been reported that the IPO of China Innovation Airlines will raise up to US$1.5 billion, which is expected to become one of the largest IPOs in the Hong Kong stock market in 2022.
In the lithium battery jianghu, the report card of China Innovation Airlines by leaps and bounds, as well as the inflated ambition, have brought a lively and extraordinary grand situation to the market pattern.
According to the prospectus, from 2019 to 2021, the revenue of China Innovation Airlines soared from 1.733 billion yuan to 6.817 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 98.3%, and the net profit changed from -156 million yuan to 112 million yuan, achieving a turnaround. This beautiful report card has become a set of good data for China Innovation Airlines to promote its brand to the outside world: the only one among the top ten power battery companies in China that has an annual year-on-year growth rate of more than 100% from 2019 to 2021.
China Innovation Airlines' ambition: By 2025, the power battery production capacity will reach 500GWh, a substantial increase of more than 41 times over 2021! At that time, the production capacity of China Innovation Aviation will reach 71.4% of the planned production capacity of the NINGDE era at that time, exceeding the proportion of 7.3% of the production capacity of the NINGDE era in 2021. It has to be said that the ambition of China Innovation Airlines and Ning Wang to compete for the "throne" of lithium batteries will be obvious, and the "Great Leap Forward" of its production capacity will stir up the storm of lithium batteries, and the market competition will show a white-hot situation.
The "technical school" of the power battery jianghu
The predecessor of Avic Lithium Battery was established in 2007, and was mainly engaged in the production of lithium iron phosphate batteries at the beginning of its establishment.
However, with the demand for batteries in the new energy vehicle market shifting to ternary lithium batteries in 2017, the development of Sino-Singapore Aviation has been deeply affected. Since 2019, Zhongxin Airlines has begun to focus on the field of ternary batteries to comply with market trends. After the launch of the transformation strategy, the company received multiple rounds of financing from 2019 to 2021, and the investment institutions included missile research institutes, Chengfei Integration, Xiaomi, Redshirt and GAC Capital.
Driven by the support of the shareholder camp and the high prosperity of the market, Zhongxin Airlines has gradually grown into one of the domestic and even global power battery head enterprises, and laid out the two main businesses of power batteries and energy storage systems. Among them, power battery products include high-voltage ternary batteries, "magazine" batteries and full-pole ear laminated batteries, etc., and the customer group covers a number of new energy vehicle brands, such as GAC Aean, Changan New Energy Vehicles, Geely affiliated companies Weirui Electric, Zero Run and Xiaopeng.
The following is the market position of China New Airlines:
Ranked second among China's third-party power battery companies;
Ranked seventh among global power battery companies;
It is one of the fastest growing core power battery companies in the world.
These achievements have made China Innovation Airlines another leader in the field of power batteries after Ning Wang and BYD. As a "technical school" in the field of power batteries, Zhongxin Airlines has successfully gained its own place in the hunt of Ningwang, BYD and overseas brands.
The mainland power battery industry has broken the past "Japan-South Korea-China" innovation transfer path and become the source of global battery technology innovation, whether it is battery material system innovation, structural innovation, process and equipment innovation, have begun to accelerate the lead. For enterprises with cutting-edge battery technology, they will be able to eat the big cake of the new energy vehicle market.
According to the company's prospectus, it has made many breakthroughs in the innovation of material, structural and manufacturing technology, as well as the innovation of ecological and healthy development. For example, the newly developed minimalist One-Stop Bettery battery has advantages in energy density, safety, economy and other aspects, and has become the focus of attention in the industry.
From the parameter point of view, the endurance and energy density of lithium iron phosphate batteries using this technology have been comparable to BYD's proud blade batteries.
In terms of R&D team, There are more than 1,000 R&D personnel in China Innovation Airlines, which is more large-scale than the 7878 R&D personnel in the Ningde era at the end of June 2021. In 2021, the R&D expenses of China Innovation Airlines accounted for 4.2% of revenue, which was comparable to the proportion of the Half Year of the Ningde Era, but there was still a big gap between the scale of R&D investment and the Ningde Era.
It is reported that the acupuncture test is one of the most stringent tests in the power battery safety performance experiment, and the ternary battery pack of Zhongxin Airlines has passed the needle prick fire test, which alleviates the safety concerns of new energy vehicle consumers. At present, only two new energy vehicle brands in China have announced the results of the "qualified" ternary battery acupuncture test, representing the world's leading ternary battery safety level, and one of the brands of power batteries is provided by China New Guinea.
It is worth noting that perhaps because China Innovation Airlines has opened the market with technical strength, at the end of last year, Xiaopeng Automobile, a new domestic car-making force, was rumored to introduce China Innovation Airlines. Xiaopeng Automobile's explosive model, Xiaopeng P7, has also begun to use the battery products of Xinhai, while the previous Xiaopeng P7 mainly used ternary lithium batteries from the Ningde era and Ewell Lithium Energy (300014.SZ). In other words, in the new energy vehicle market, the power battery products of Zhongxin Airlines have gradually achieved results in the offensive against the Ningde era.
In addition, in 2019, China New Aviation replaced the Ningde era and became the largest supplier of power batteries for PASSENGER CARS of GAC. At present, GAC Aeon's best-selling main models, including Aion Y and Aion S, are equipped with power batteries provided by China New Air.
In the face of the increasing technological strength of the "little brother" and the "threat" of its own customer circle, the Ningde era and China Innovation Airlines have accumulated grievances, and the battle for intellectual property rights between the two sides has quietly started.
In July last year, CATL sued ZhongxinHang for infringement of five patents, including explosion-proof devices, cathode-grade chips and batteries, and the batteries suspected of infringement had been mounted on tens of thousands of vehicles. At the same time, CATL also filed a claim of up to 185 million yuan against China New China Airlines. In the prospectus, Zhongxin Hang believes that the installed capacity of its battery products continues to increase at a high level, and the patent infringement case will not have a significant impact on the company's operating performance.
The "action faction" of power batteries: listing sprint production capacity and expanding the circle of friends
As one of the world's fastest-growing core power battery companies, the aggressive pace of development of Zhongxin Airlines inevitably makes people worry that the market position of the Ningde era will be shaken by the former.
From 2019 to 2021, the installed capacity of power batteries in Ningde Times in China increased by 149% from 32.31GWh to 80.51GWh; in the same period, the installed capacity of China Innovation Aviation Power Battery increased by 5.1 times from 1.49GWh to 9.1GWh, the growth rate was surprising, and it was also in this time period that China Innovation Airlines excluded Guoxuan Hi-Tech from the third place in the country.
The crazy capacity expansion strategy and the expanding circle of friends have become an important factor for China Innovation Aviation to hide from the tiger's mouth.
In terms of production capacity, in order to support the growth of downstream orders, China Innovation Airlines has continuously expanded its production capacity in Changzhou, Luoyang and Xiamen in recent years. In order to expand production capacity, the scale of capital investment of China Innovation Airlines is not much worse than that of NINGDE Times and BYD, and from 2019 to 2021, the company's capital expenditure mainly used for production expansion is as high as 1.343 billion yuan, 3.03 billion yuan and 9.649 billion yuan, respectively.
At present, China Innovation Airlines is expanding its industrial bases in Chengdu, Wuhan, Hefei and Jiangmen, and adding a number of production lines, and the actual production capacity of mass production, construction and construction has exceeded 100GWh, and the future growth rate will be very rapid.
With 500 GWh of capacity in operation by 2025, China New Guinea will need to expand its current installed capacity by 41 times. Therefore, if China Innovation Airlines can realize the dream of competing with BYD and Ningde era for industry bosses, listing financing will become the key to whether the company can achieve its wishes.
In terms of expanding the circle of friends, The ability of China New China Airlines to expand passengers has also put deep pressure on competitors.
Since August 2018, Zhongchuang Aviation has become a power battery supplier for the main models of many independent automobile brands such as Dongfeng, Changan, GAC and Geely. The key is that because its product full-pole ear laminated battery has excellent volume energy density, outstanding fast charging performance and other characteristics, the product has been equipped with a number of key customers of the company's mainstream new platform models, including Xiaopeng and zero-run these new car-making forces. In the future, the company's "killer" products do not rule out that they can win orders for more mainstream new energy vehicle brands.
Running too fast and not making a few bucks?
Engaged in research and development, grabbing customers, expanding production capacity, the growth rate of China Innovation Airlines since 2019 can be said to be fierce in the field of domestic power batteries.
But it is worth our attention that although the growth of China Innovation Airlines is like a bamboo, compared with the Ningde era and BYD, the profitability of Ning Wang and BYD can shake off the streets of China Innovation Airlines: after all, your uncle is still your uncle.
As can be seen in the chart above, since 2019, the gross profit margin of China Innovation Airlines is far less than that of Ningde Times and BYD, of which 2019 and 2021 are even as low as about 5%. Such a low gross profit margin has become one of the reasons why China Innovation Airlines can turn around its losses in 2021.
So why is the gross profit margin of China Innovation Airlines so low?
This is related to the failure of the industrial chain layout of China Innovation Aviation to keep up with the Ningde era and BYD. In the past, in order to meet the stable supply and cost control of lithium battery raw materials and intermediate materials, CATL cooperated with upstream and downstream related enterprises in the industrial chain through equity participation, joint venture, holding and other ways, and had a layout in the upstream core resource areas such as positive and negative electrode materials, electrolytes, and diaphragms, and the sound supply chain achieved cost control and improved bargaining power.
In contrast, the layout of its industrial chain is obviously not good. Especially in terms of upstream battery raw materials, Zhongxin Airlines has not yet had a relevant layout, mainly to purchase raw materials from suppliers for production, so that when the battery raw materials fluctuate sharply, the bargaining power is not as good as in the Ningde era.
Under the future expansion of production, the production capacity and sales volume of China New Airlines may continue to narrow with BYD and Ningde era. But while aggressively pursuing its dreams, China Innovation Airlines also needs to slow down and draw a construction drawing for the company's future profitability.
Author: Distant