Jia Haonan Wan Bo was sent from the Vice Pilot Temple
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After Wei (lai) xiao (peng) li (think), the fourth sprint IPO car-making new force came, this time a zero-run car.
On the evening of March 17, zero-run cars of the second echelon of the new forces officially submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with CICC, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and CCB International as joint sponsors.
In the past 2021 to achieve a zero run of sales take-off, at this time knocking on the door of the IPO, it is most appropriate.
But in the prospectus of zero-run cars, there are two logical contradictions:
First, among the so-called new car-making forces, the only car company with the ability to develop and self-develop in the whole region has accumulated R&D expenditure in 3 years, but it is only less than 1.4 billion yuan, which is far lower than the head of Wei (Lai) Xiao (Peng) Li (think) who was listed first.
The second is the market positioning in the high-end market, but nearly 90% of the sales are sold at a price of no more than 100,000 yuan and the profit is meager.
These two unreasonable places are also problems that need to be answered and solved under the situation of steady improvement of zero-run delivery.
Zero run overview
Zero-run cars, founded in December 2015, emerged in the first wave of new car manufacturing waves.
In terms of business, zero-run cars focus on intelligent pure electric vehicles, the core label - full-stack self-research, known as the only car company with global self-development and self-manufacturing capabilities among the new forces of car manufacturing.
In terms of products, zero-run cars mainly target the 150,000-300,000 yuan high-end pure electric market.
According to the official website of Zero Run Car, it is currently selling 3 models, including the Zero Run S01 Coupe released in January 2019, the low-end A00 model Zero Run T03 listed in May 2020, and the mid-range pure electric SUV listed in September last year, the Zero Run C11, priced at 150,000-200,000 yuan, which is also the most expensive model currently on sale for Zero Run.
In addition, there is also a zero-run C01 coupe, which is scheduled to be released during this year's Beijing Auto Show, and there is no more information flowing out at present, but the market rumors are consistent with the positioning of C01 and Xiaopeng P7.
In terms of delivery, although zero running was established at almost the same time as new forces such as Wei (Lai) Xiao (Peng) Li (Xiang), the delivery of vehicles was relatively late.
The number of deliveries, the prospectus shows that in 2021, it will lead the cumulative delivery of 43,000 vehicles, a substantial increase of 443% over more than 8,000 vehicles in 2020, ranking fifth among the new car-making forces.
In terms of model distribution, zero-run cars are a bit biased, and the mini-car zero-run T03, which focuses on the low-end market, accounts for the highest proportion, with 38,463 units delivered.
That is to say, although zero-run cars are positioned in the high-end market, the current sales force is still dominated by the low-end market.
At the operational level, Zero Run gives 4 key words: revenue growth, cost decline, and loss expansion.
The prospectus discloses that in 2021, the scale of zero-run revenue was 3.132 billion yuan, a substantial increase of 400% over 2020; the gross profit margin was -44.3%, an increase of 6 percentage points from -50.6% in the previous year; and the net loss was 2.63 billion yuan, an increase of 181% over 935 million yuan in 2020.
In addition, in terms of research and development, the investment in zero running seems to be different from the self-calibrated "full-stack self-research" label.
According to the prospectus, in 2019-2021, the total R&D expenditure was 1.387 billion yuan, of which the expenditure in 2021 was 740 million yuan, accounting for 23.62% of the revenue scale in the accounting period.
This data is even lower than the ideal known as "cutting the door". According to public information, ideal in the year before the listing, that is, in 2019, the annual revenue was 284 million yuan, but the investment in research and development exceeded 1.1 billion yuan.
In terms of assets, as of the end of 2021, the total assets of Zero Run Automobile were 12.526 billion yuan, an increase of 283% over the end of the previous year, while due to the continuous expansion of losses, the net outflow of operating cash flow of Zero Run in 2021 was 1.019 billion yuan, an increase of 39% over 732 million yuan in the previous year.
As of the end of 2021, the cash and cash equivalents on the account of zero-run automobiles were 4.338 billion yuan, an increase of more than 40 times from 101 million yuan at the end of the previous year, mainly due to large-scale financing activities in the zero-run year.
Who built Zero Run?
Starting in 2021, zero-run sales began to counterattack, squeezing out WM Cars and rushing into the first echelon.
43,121 new cars were delivered throughout the year, ranking fifth after Wei Xiaoli.
This year was also the first year that zero-run cars were widely recognized.
However, zero-run cars are actually the "old qualifications" in the new forces, founded in 2015, and the same batch of entrepreneurs as "Wei Xiaoli".
Zero-run cars are incubated in Dahua shares. That's right, it is second only to Hikvision's security giant Dahua.
The two key core figures are also the founding elders of Dahua.
Fu Liquan, founder of Dahua, graduated from Zhejiang Electronics Industry School, founded Dahua from scratch, and became the second in the global AI security industry. Claiming to have a dream of a market value of 100 billion, but the global security market is only 100 billion, so turn your attention to the car.
This brings out another key figure in Zero Run: Zhu Jiangming.
Zhu Jiangming is the co-founder of Dahua, who started a business with Fu Liquan with all his 5,000 yuan in the early years, and is a close comrade-in-arms who suffers together.
Zhu Jiangming came from a technical background, graduated from Hangzhou University majoring in electrical engineering (now merged into Zhejiang University), was dahua CTO before zero run, and the key products of Dahua's growth, breakthrough and rapid development period were all led by Zhu Jiangming, including automotive security products.
After the establishment of Zero Run Automobile, Zhu Jiangming gradually resigned from his position related to Dahua and was fully responsible for the management and operation of Zero Run. He is also the chairman of Zero Run Auto, and holds the title of founder, and is also the largest individual shareholder of Zero Run Auto, with a shareholding ratio of 9.15%.
Fu Liquan retreated into the background and is the second largest individual shareholder of Zero Run Automobile (9.01%).
In addition, the prospectus also disclosed that Zhu Jiangming and Fu Liquan indirectly held 31.01% of the zero-run shares through their families and affiliated holding companies, which is the absolute largest shareholder group.
Zhu and Fu reached an agreement to take concerted action, and if there is a disagreement, Zhu Jiangming's decision shall prevail.
That is to say, the current actual controller and the highest decision-maker of zero-run cars is Zhu Jiangming.
However, the first electric network has reported that Zhu Jiangming recalled in an early interview that it was completely "cute and new", and it was not even clear that the car needed qualifications, thinking that it could be sold after passing the quality inspection.
When starting a business with zero running, the general environment is still "cheating and suffocation flying together", and after a few years, a large number of players have been eliminated.
However, Zero Run not only survived smoothly, but also launched the first mass production car S01 in January 2019, which is also inseparable from Zhu Jiangming's own background in technology + management.
Among the management of Zero Run, important names are Wu Baojun and Cao Li, who are both executive directors.
Wu Baojun, born in 1970, graduated from the School of Automotive and Agricultural Machinery Engineering of Jilin University of Technology, majoring in automobiles and tractors.
Wu Baojun is currently the president of Zero-Run Automobile, and his career is mainly focused on automobile sales, marketing services, and automobile insurance, and he has served in GAC for a long time, successively serving as the market leader of several brands under GAC.
Cao Li, graduated from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. Vice President of Zero Run Auto, General Manager of Vehicle R&D Department, and current head of technology and products of Zero Run. Born in The GreatErvision Group, he has been engaged in design work for a long time.
As of December 31 last year, there were 3,190 employees in Zero Run, of which R&D personnel accounted for 33.9% of the total number of employees.
What is the treatment of zero-run R&D personnel? It is not disclosed, but we can make a rough estimate.
According to the prospectus, the annual R&D expenditure of zero run is 740 million yuan, of which the salary of R&D personnel accounts for 50.6%, the expenditure is 375 million yuan, the average size of about 1,000 R&D personnel, and the "per capita" level of R&D expenditure for the company is 357,000 yuan.
In contrast, the ideal car, which is not so labeled as technology and intelligence, will invest 3.29 billion yuan in research and development in 2021, and its research and development team will exceed 2,000 people.
Therefore, compared with the head company, there is a big gap in the level and scale of research and development of zero run. However, this is also related to the fact that Zero Run is not as "rich and powerful" in terms of funds as friends.
Li Bin once said that you don't want to build a car without 20 billion. According to the prospectus information, since its inception, Zero Run has raised a total of 8 rounds of financing, totaling 11.86 billion.
Investors include Sequoia Zhisheng, Shanghai Electric Hong Kong, Guosen Securities and Hangzhou City.
The largest investors are still from Dahua, as well as Fu and Zhu's affiliated enterprises (Ningbo Huayang, Zhoushan Haohai, etc.).
Compared with peers, it is indeed not much. And more than 6 billion yuan of funds were obtained in the C round of financing in August last year.
That is to say, before the take-off of zero-run sales in 2021, it has been living a tight life of not having a lot of money, and most of the blood transfusions rely on Dahua and related enterprises.
Compared with other new car-making forces that are constantly talking about topics, halos, and popular with capital, zero running is indeed a hard job.
Where is the future of Zero Run?
However, for zero running, the business of building cars can also be called "keeping the clouds open to see the moon".
After 6 years of hard work, sales have taken off, fame has gradually begun, and the most important thing is that investors have begun to pay attention to it. In fact, since last year, zero running has passed through the swaddling period and entered rapid growth.
The strategy, technical route, advantages and challenges of zero running are also gradually being officially disclosed.
In the prospectus, Zero Run believes that the root of its own advantage lies in self-research and cost.
According to Zero Run itself, they are a full-stack self-developed smart car company. This full-stack self-research is the same hard-core strength as Tesla and Xiaopeng.
The hardware includes vehicle research and development, design, in-line chassis, battery pack (except for batteries), drive motor, high voltage charging technology...
The software includes automotive software such as autonomous driving algorithms, smart cockpit OS, and so on.
There are even chips. In the past few years, we have set up a chip subsidiary with Dahua to develop in-vehicle AI chips.
Although the current annual R&D investment is only equivalent to the level of other new forces for one quarter, and the team size is not large, this does not prevent Zero Run from being laid out according to Tesla's technical standards.
Zero Run believes that the advantages of full-stack self-development are extended to form the best vertical integration capabilities in the industry.
This means that the zero-run self-developed technology, combined with the supply chain companies invested or controlled by the Dahua ecosystem, can minimize the cost of zero-running cars and raise the highest efficiency.
One example is the security system on a zero-run car.
So what's the challenge with zero-run cars?
Obviously, the investment in technology research and development is not enough, "three years more than Tesla", the difficulty is not generally large.
In addition, Zero Run is currently facing a problem, that is, the core flagship product that has not opened sales.
Zero Run began to take off in sales at the end of 2020, until the end of last year rushed into the first echelon, relying on an A0-class car T03.
The same as the Wuling MiniEV is a super cost-effective route.
Such a product naturally cannot have any technical content, and the profit margin is also very low, let alone any core competitiveness.
The threshold of A0-class cars is too low, everyone can do it, and future competition will only lead to the road of unlimited low-cost inner roll.
Wuling can still rely on SAIC, only need to complete the task of new energy points, whether you earn money or not is not important. But zero runs don't work.
If you can't open the mainstream market of more than 150,000, not only will the so-called "smart car" never be realized, but survival will also become a problem.
So the next step of zero running business planning is very clear:
The first is the C11, which began to be delivered in October last year, is the first medium-sized SUV with zero run, which has received more than 20,000 orders, and this year it will complete the task of ramping up production capacity, and gradually replace T03 as the main force in terms of delivery.
The second is that a sedan C01 with the same platform as C11 will be released, positioning medium and large, and the length of the car will exceed 5 meters. A major technical highlight is the zero-run self-developed CTC integrated battery chassis.
In terms of intelligence, consistent with the current C11, the perception hardware includes 5 millimeter-wave radars, 1 binocular camera, 9 cameras and 12 ultrasonic radars.
In addition, at the end of last year, Zero Run started the development of the A platform, positioning compact.
In the next 3 years, it will be the stage of "dumplings" for zero-run cars.
By the end of 2025, ZeroCar will launch eight new models, including three sedans (coupes/mini cars), four SUVs and one MPV.
If combined with the zero-running car 2.0 product layout map, the above three new cars, in addition to the known zero-run C01, zero-run car will also launch two cars positioned between 100,000 yuan and 150,000 yuan and 250,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan, with internal codes A01 and D01 respectively.
It can be seen that the model layout trend of zero-run cars is large-scale and high-end, and covers all the ranges from 10w to 30w.
The strength of zero-run self-developed technology will also be known on new cars in the future.
But the premise of all this is still: money.
In order to increase R&D investment, zero running will continue to expand production capacity, build new factories, and increase sales stores. Under such an expansion rhythm, I am afraid that a Hong Kong stock listing may not be possible.
But Zero Run had no doubt about his own strength, because Zhu Jiangming once said:
"Zero run is likely to be their (investor's) last ticket."
The question is, zero run Hong Kong stock listing, will you buy a ticket to get on the bus?
—Ends—
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