Written | Cold Zelin
Edit the | Wang Pan
On the evening of March 17, Zero Ran submitted a listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The co-sponsors are CICC, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and CCB International.
This is the fourth new car-making force listed after Wei Xiaoli, and it is also the first new force in the waist to be listed. However, according to last year's market sales, the zero-run delivery data is only at the end of the waist force, because the absolute value is low, so the growth rate is fast.
Relatively speaking, the waist forces in the early stage of the road is not smooth, Weima and Nezha are trapped in the B-end market, zero run the first model S01 sales are flat.
However, the zero-run transition came sooner and harder, with deliveries starting in July 2019, T03 starting in May 2020, and C11 delivering in October 2021. Basically maintaining the rhythm of one model a year, and the second A00-class electric vehicle has seized the dividend of mini-cars and quickly increased the delivery of zero-run.
In the prospectus, Zero Run also mentions that "Zero Run is the fastest growing company among China's leading emerging electric vehicle companies in terms of delivery volume." ”
Of course, the sales supported by mini-cars cannot stand firm in the current new energy market. Although zero running can obtain funds to continue to invest in the current competition after listing, its shortcomings will also be magnified, and there are still many problems to be solved to be recognized by capital.
In addition, the IPO of zero-running cars at this time can be said to have not caught up with the era of high premiums of the capital market for new energy, and missed the opportunity to complete the fundraising at a very small cost.
In July 2020, when Ideal Went public, founder Li wanted to say that it was the most successful IPO in China's automotive sector. At that time, Wall Street gave Tesla and Weilai a very high valuation of the new energy track, and the ideal car soared 43% on the day of listing. A month later, Xiaopeng Motors went public, and its stock price rose 41% on the first day.
After the completion of the IPO, wei xiaoli and the three companies have also completed new fundraising in their own ways, and the cash reserves have reached the order of 30-50 billion yuan.
Nowadays, Wei Xiaoli's three companies have fallen a lot compared with the highest stock price, the high valuation of new energy is no longer, and zero running is bound to sacrifice more equity to complete the fundraising. The complexity and uncertainty of the environment will also make most capital cautious, and it will be more difficult to complete the established fundraising quota.
Cast wide nets and fish more
For the mini car market, it has always been the favorite of traditional car companies. There is not much intelligent demand, but also rely on mature supply chains and manufacturing advantages to quickly create a cost-effective product to occupy the market, Hongguang MINI, small ants, ice cream are the same.
These models also have fatal shortcomings, low gross profit situation, very tolerant of supply chain and losses, for example, this year's rapid rise in upstream raw material prices once led to Euler black cats, white cats to stop taking orders.
In addition, in the traditional car companies, relying on the new energy credits obtained by mini cars to feed their own huge fuel vehicle system, this shortcoming is infinitely reduced. But in the new forces, there are obviously no such "superior" conditions.
Coupled with the unfavorable first model, the "bloody listing" of zero running is also expected.
According to the prospectus, zero run 2021 revenue of 3.132 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 396.4%, but the net loss is also expanding, 2021 net profit - 2.846 billion yuan, an increase of 158.7% year-on-year. The gross profit margin in the three years is: -95.7%, -50.6%, -44.3%, showing a gradual increase trend, but compared with the gross profit margin of Weilai and the ideal of about 20%, the profit is still far away.
In order to improve gross profit margin, getting rid of low-end cars is the primary factor. Zero Run also clearly pointed out in the prospectus that it will mainly focus on The mainstream new energy vehicle market in China of 150,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan. That is to say, the T series and the S series, after which there should be no new products.
In October last year, the third zero-run model, the C11, was officially delivered as a medium-sized SUV priced at 159,800-199,800 yuan, performing well on the order data, and has received more than 22,000 orders by the end of 2021.
However, from the delivery side, the current C11 has not yet become the main model of zero-run. A total of 3964 C11 vehicles were delivered in the three months last year, compared with 2103 vehicles and 1144 vehicles in January and February this year, respectively.
On the one hand, C11 is still in the stage of capacity climbing, and after August last year, T03 is no longer outsourced production, all are produced in the Jinhua plant, which plans to have a production capacity of 200,000 yuan / year, and Zero Run also plans to build a new production base in Hangzhou to further expand production capacity. On the other hand, the first quarter coincided with the off-season of automobile sales, resulting in a decline in the overall sales data, so the strength of C11 needs to be verified by subsequent market reactions.
In addition to the C11, the zero-run prospectus revealed that a medium-sized and large sedan C01 will be released in the second quarter of next year, and delivery will be achieved in the third quarter.
The C01 and C11 are built on the same platform, with a body length of about 5 meters, equipped with Leapmotor Power and a 90 kWh tram, NEDC 700 km/ 700 km, zero hundred acceleration within 4 seconds, and will adopt a battery chassis integrated (CTC) design.
According to the zero run 2.0 strategy, C01 will also be in the price range of 150,000-200,000 yuan, and will directly compete with Xiaopeng P5. Judging from the revealed body size, endurance and performance data, perhaps C01 will adopt the same strategy as C11, taking high cost performance as its main selling point.
According to the prospectus, Zero Run 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 all sizes.
Unlike most new forces' early strategies for deepening SUV, zero-run has now covered four models: coupes, micro-electric vehicles, mid-size SUVs, and upcoming medium- and large-sized sedans, as well as MPV. Through different price points and models, Zero Run is trying to radiate its own brand to every market, which is also the most widely involved car companies we see in addition to BYD.
The advantage is that it can make up for the problem of weak brand perception as soon as possible, and at the same time avoid the situation of left-right hand combat between ES6 and EC6, and increase overall sales.
The disadvantage is that as a new force, it may be difficult to accurately grasp the needs of users by entering multiple markets too quickly.
Zhu Jiangming said in an early interview that due to lack of experience, he did not even know that he needed qualifications to build cars, and the "silence" of the first product, S01, also proved the importance of laying a solid foundation, such as Great Wall Motors' decades of deep ploughing of pickup trucks and SUVs.
The premise of casting a wide net and catching more fish must be an experienced "fisherman".
Grasp research and development, expand channels
In the new force, Xiao Peng first proposed "full-stack self-research", and zero-run proposed "global self-research" on this basis.
Zhu Jiangming said in an interview with the media that global self-development refers to the entire intelligent driving system and intelligent electric drive system from hardware to software all self-developed. The hardware structure starts with the resistors, and the software starts with the code.
"The hardware of other new car-making forces relies more on third parties, who mainly do applications and algorithms, not hardware."
Zero Run believes that self-research capabilities and vertical integration can improve R&D efficiency and reduce costs. By the end of last year, among the 3190 employees who ran zero, R&D personnel accounted for 33.9%.
However, looking at the financial report data, the absolute value of zero-run R & D investment is not hard, the three-year R & D expenditure is 3.58, 2.89, 740 million yuan, and the R & D expenses of Wei Xiaoli in the third quarter of last year alone reached 11.93, 12.64, 889 million yuan, so the three-year R & D investment of zero running is only slightly higher than the single quarterly cost of the head force.
Among them, the financial factor dominates.
According to the data of enterprise investigation, since its establishment, Zero Run has completed a total of 7 rounds of financing, and the disclosed financing amount is about 10 billion yuan. As of January 31, 2022, zero-run working capital was RMB6,332 million. According to Wei Xiaoli's third-quarter financial report data, the three companies have about 40 billion yuan in hand.
At the same time, Li Bin also raised the threshold of car manufacturing again at the end of last year, "The capital threshold for car manufacturing needs to be reserved, a few years ago I said it was 20 billion yuan, and now there is no 40 billion yuan that may not be able to do it." ”
On the other hand, in the initial stage of car manufacturing, zero-run also spent 3 years to develop its own intelligent driving chip - Lingxin 01, which has been installed on the latest model C11. However, Zero Run also encountered the same embarrassing situation as mobile phone manufacturers, although the computing power of Lingxin 01 was higher than that of Mobileye Q4 released in 2018, it was not enough to see at the moment.
At the same time, chips need to continuously invest money and time, which is inevitably a little weak for a new force that has not yet generated positive cash flow.
Perhaps aware of the main direction of R & D investment, Zhu Jiangming said in an interview last year that Lingxin 01 zero run does not have a new chip research and development plan, because the availability of options on the market has been much larger, and the prospectus should not have written the intelligent driving chip plan.
Sort out the main research and development directions, zero running can also reserve more "surplus grain" in the competition.
With the increasing investment in research and development and the continuous improvement of the product line, Zero Run needs to continue to improve the offline marketing network.
At present, Zero Run adopts a similar sales model to Xiaopeng, that is, the combination of direct stores and channel partner stores. As of December 31, 2021, Zero Run has 23 directly operated stores and 286 channel partner stores.
In fact, Zero Run carried out a large-scale channel expansion last year, from 95 at the beginning of the year to 291 at the end of the year, an increase of 215.4% year-on-year.
Compared with Xiaopeng in the same price range, zero running in the total number seems to be comparable, but there is a serious "partial" problem, according to Xiaopeng's data in the third quarter of last year, its direct sales stores have 167 authorized stores and 104 stores, which is more balanced.
We have noticed that Zero Run continues to consolidate the construction of third-party channels and quickly rolls out the sales network, but unfortunately, the disadvantage of the number of directly operated stores may affect two aspects, and the collection of user information and demand control are incomplete. At present, the intention of the zero-run brand to climb the slope is very obvious, and the construction of direct-operated stores may be the main task of zero-run this year.
epilogue
According to data, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in 2021 has reached 39% in the range of 150,000-300,000 yuan, and 10.4% and 50.6% below 150,000 yuan and more than 300,000 yuan are respectively. With the continuous increase in the penetration rate of new energy, the new energy market will gradually change the previous "barbell" structure and move towards popularization.
Most of the waist forces are also in this range, zero running has achieved a first-mover advantage, and among the new forces in the head, the brands in this range are only Xiaopeng for the time being.
However, in the limited amount of funds to play a differentiation, the waist forces are facing the same problem, is it heavy research and development light marketing or light research and development heavy marketing?
We don't know how the car companies that are ready to go public next will choose, but the zero-run listing has been like a stormtrooper, which is accelerating the competition in this market.