Text | Jin Wei
After the listing of Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng Automobile, the fourth new car-making force sprinted to the IPO.
On the evening of March 17, Zhejiang Zero Run Technology Co., Ltd. submitted a listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, planning to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with CICC, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and CCB International as joint sponsors.
According to the prospectus, in 2020, zero-run cars delivered a total of 8,050 electric vehicles, and in 2021, 44,000 electric vehicles were delivered, accumulating 52,000 units. At present, zero running is still in a loss, with a revenue of 3.13 billion yuan and a loss of 2.845 billion yuan last year, with a total loss of more than 4.8 billion yuan in the past three years. According to the company, 2022 will continue to generate net losses.
New energy vehicles burn money, zero-running cars are no exception, but Wei Xiaoli caught up with the good timing, and now the valuation of new energy vehicles has generally declined compared with the previous two years, and zero-running cars are listed at this time, what kind of valuation will the market give?
Last year,000 vehicles broke 10,000 vehicles for the first time in the third quarter of
Founded in July 2015, CEO Zhu Jiangming is one of the founders of security giant Dahua Shares, and also a technology research and development background.
According to Frost & Sullivan, Zero-Run Cars is currently the only emerging electric vehicle company in China with global independent research and development capabilities, and Zero-Run Cars has realized the modularization and platform development of underlying software and hardware.
Zero-run cars are incubated by the domestic security giant Dahua shares, and there is some confidence in taking the technical self-research route. The prospectus mentions that its business scope covers intelligent electric vehicle vehicle design, R&D and manufacturing, intelligent driving, motor electronic control, battery system development and cloud-based vehicle networking solutions.
According to Frost & Sullivan's estimates, by 2026, new energy vehicles in the price range of 150,000 to 300,000 yuan will account for 49.1% of all new energy vehicle sales in China. Therefore, zero-run cars are also mainly positioned in this market.
According to the prospectus, Zero Run Auto mainly focuses on the new energy vehicle market with prices ranging from RMB150,000 to RMB300,000, and zero Run Auto has delivered three smart electric vehicles in the past three years: S01, T03 and C11.
In 2021, zero-run vehicles delivered a total of 43,748 electric vehicles, an increase of 443.5% over 2020.
From the data point of view, starting from the third quarter of 2021, the quarterly delivery of zero-running cars exceeded 10,000 for the first time, exceeding the 8,080 deliveries in the whole year of 2020, and the sales continued to exceed 10,000 in the following fourth quarter, reaching 17,045.
From annual sales of less than 10,000 vehicles to quarterly sales of more than 10,000 to monthly sales of nearly 10,000 vehicles, zero-run cars took less than two years.
According to Frost & Sullivan, zero-run cars are the fastest-growing of emerging electric vehicle companies in terms of deliveries.
However, it is worth mentioning that in the sales ranking of new power car companies in 2021, the top "Wei Xiaoli" has exceeded the order of 90,000, and the annual delivery of zero-run cars is only half of them.
Zero-run Cars said that in the future, it plans to launch eight new models by the end of 2025 at a rate of one to three models per year, covering cars, SUVs and MPVs of various sizes, of which the latest large sedan C01 will be launched in the second quarter of 2022, with a mileage of about 700 kilometers.
Similar to most new energy vehicle companies, zero-run cars have not been profitable since their establishment, and with the growth of revenue, the amount of loss is also increasing year by year.
In terms of financial data, from 2019 to 2021, zero-run cars achieved revenue of 117 million, 631 million and 312 million, and the losses were 901 million, 1.1 billion and 2.845 billion, respectively.
New energy vehicles are still a cash-burning industry, with zero-run cars losing 4.8 billion yuan in three years, and the degree of loss continues to increase. Adjusted losses of 810 million and 935 million in 2019-2020, respectively, and losses of 2.629 billion in 2021, also nearly 4.4 billion.
According to the prospectus, due to the research and development investment of new models and the expansion of production facilities and sales networks, zero-running cars are expected to continue to generate net losses in 2022.
In terms of gross profit margin, the gross profit margin of zero-running cars will further improve from -95.7% in 2019 to -50.6% in 2020 and -44.3% in 2021. The improvement in gross margins was explained by zero-running vehicles mainly due to higher-margin deliveries of smart electric vehicles and lower unit costs due to economies of scale.
In 2019, 2020 and 2021, R&D expenditure of zero-run vehicles was 358 million yuan, 289 million yuan and 740 million yuan respectively. By the end of 2021, its R & D personnel accounted for 33.9%.
Zero Run Technology adopts the model of combining direct stores with channel partner stores to achieve rapid expansion of the number of stores. As of the end of last year, Zero Run had 23 directly operated stores and 268 channel partner stores, which was three times the number of stores in the same period in 2020.
In terms of cost of sales, due to the significant expansion of stores, sales expenses increased from 155 million yuan in 2020 to 428 million yuan in 2021.
Since its establishment, ZeroCar has received investment from well-known financial investors and industrial investors such as Sequoia China, Shanghai Electric, CRRC, Gopher Assets, Jiuzhi Investment, Yijing Capital, Heda Investment, CICC and so on.
In its prospectus, ZeroCar said that the net proceeds from the IPO will be mainly used for research and development, increasing production capacity, expanding business and enhancing brand awareness, as well as for operating capital and general corporate purposes.
At present, Zero-Run Automobile produces intelligent electric vehicles and their core systems and electronic components at its factory in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, and the production line of this wholly-owned digital artificial intelligence factory currently has a production capacity of 200,000 vehicles per year.
According to the plan of zero-run vehicles, it will build a new production base in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province to further expand production capacity, so as to seize the major opportunities for the growth of the new energy vehicle market.
At present, the profitability of zero-running cars is not only limited by the lower price of bicycles, but also affected by the non-personal customers of the B-end, the latter are mainly large customers, and their bargaining power is high, and zero-running cars need to continue to expand the proportion of individual customers.
At present, the new energy vehicle market competition is fierce, in addition to the new forces of car manufacturing, traditional car companies have joined in this red sea, zero-running cars to continue to grow bigger, improve delivery data, can not be separated from the blood transfusion of the capital market, which is also the reason why the company is eager to go public, but at present, the valuation of new energy vehicle companies is no longer so high, currently in the continuous loss of zero-running cars, what kind of valuation the market will give, is still unknown.