[This column is jointly produced by Tencent Auto and Kung Fu Auction]
2853 words 5 minutes to read.
Welcome to this issue of "Kung Fu Shooting", in the past six months, the new energy sector has undergone "drastic changes". The US stock market suddenly turned the rudder, and the requirements for Chinese stocks became extremely stringent, and even Wei Xiaoli sought a Hong Kong stock listing. A-shares also have strict restrictions on profits and losses, which is also out of reach for most of the new forces in the start-up period. In this case, the choice of Hong Kong IPO has almost become the only way out for the new forces.
The rise in raw material prices and the shrinking of state subsidies have also had a great impact on the new energy industry. In this case, several second-tier new energy vehicle companies have recently opened the road to Hong Kong IPO, and WM, Hezhong, Zero Run, and Gaohe have all done their best.
These four car companies should be the most influential new forces after Wei Xiaoli, all of which are piled up to ask for "tickets", which makes people look a little sighy. Who has the best chance of finally "going ashore"? Let the kung fu car take everyone to see it together.
Image source: Visual China
(1) WM Motor, the top of the financing is difficult to explain to investors
Putting Weima in this position is indeed a bit embarrassing. To know that Weima was once a real new front-line force, and Weilai is a temporary Yuliang, even Xiaopeng and Ideal are not its opponents, but now they have to be compared with Nezha and Zero Run, and the key is that they are not comparable.
In 2019, WM Automobile's sales ranked second among the new forces, second only to Weilai at that time, and WM EX5 also won the championship of single model delivery; in 2020, WM Automobile sales ranked fourth among the new forces, that is, in this year, Xiaopeng and Ideal were listed successively, and "Wei Xiaoli" locked the first-line position; in 2021, WM Automobile sales ranked sixth among the new forces, surpassed by Zero Run and Nezha. In the past February, WM remained "silent" about sales, and the high probability market performance was not good enough.
Obviously, WM can be said to be a step a year in recent years, steadily declining. The model that can be sold is still only an EX5, and it is also plagued by "spontaneous combustion doors" and "lock electric doors", which can be said to be internal and external troubles.
Corresponding to the dismal market performance, WM's financing ability is surprisingly good, which is the real top of financing. Since 2016, it has received a $1 billion investment from Prancing Horse Capital, followed by Tencent, Sequoia, Tianqi Venture Capital, Haina Asia, and other industry giants, and Baidu has participated in WM's three financings in 2017, 2019 and 2020. As of October last year, WM's financing scale has exceeded 30 billion. At that time, it also sent a good news, becoming the new force with the most financing, but taking so much money to make it like this, it is indeed a bit unreasonable.
Of course, Kung Fu Auto believes that it is only a matter of time before WM finally IPOs, after all, there are so many big guys behind it. But listing is not the antidote to all problems, whether there is a healthy research and development, manufacturing, sales, service system is the most important, otherwise Jia Yueting's FF is listed.
(2) Whether United Automobile can go up is the key
Speaking of United Cars, many people may be relatively unfamiliar, but to talk about its car brand Nezha Automobile, it is estimated that many people still know, can get this kind of "ID" with special meaning, enough to see that United Automobile has a deep background.
Contrary to WM, Nezha Automobile, a subsidiary of Hezhong, has recently been proud of the spring breeze, with a delivery volume of 11,009 units in January, breaking into the top three of new forces, and surpassing Xiaopeng and Weilai in February, second only to the ideal. Strictly speaking, only from the perspective of sales, United is already a quasi-first-line new force.
But Nezha also has hidden worries, first of all, its sales distribution, the current main sales model is two, Nezha V and Nezha U, of which 6-8 million yuan or so Nezha V accounts for about 70% of the total sales. And as a car company with a deep "background", a large part of Nezha's sales are contributed by B-end customers, and large customers such as online car-hailing, shared travel, enterprises and institutions account for a large part, and everyone knows that the procurement volume of these institutions is difficult to sustain.
Especially this year, the price of raw materials plus subsidies have declined, and new energy cars within 100,000 yuan have been greatly affected. The mind of the United Is on the new model Nezha S, which will enter the market of 200,000 yuan, and the success or failure of this car will greatly affect the subsequent development of United.
At present, CATL and 360 have invested in Hezhong Automobile, NINGDE Era has a good influence in the upstream and downstream of the new energy automobile industry chain, and 360 can strengthen the "Internet gene" of Hezhong, which is crucial for the upward development of new forces.
However, it is still the previous sentence, the blessing of these big guys will make the road to IPO of The United Market go smoother, but the final development still depends on itself.
(3) Zero-run cars, full-stack self-development can really work?
Zero-run car is also a very distinctive car company, it has a very prominent feature, that is, almost all the core technology is independent research and development, the official saying is "full stack self-research". From the power system, to the intelligent network system, to the intelligent driving system, it is all independently developed.
This is a bit similar to BYD, but its size can not be compared with BYD, and this persistence is still worth encouraging.
The first product of zero running is called S01, but it does not really ring, and even the power system failure, control system failure and other problems are still relatively many, almost ruined the start-up brand. Then Zero Run launched T03, which is just a mini car, the intelligent configuration is quite good, has achieved a good reputation, and has also become the sales responsibility of Zero Run. But at the end of the day, the influence is a little weaker. After all, unless you sell this kind of car to the Hongguang MINI EV level, it will not form a scale, and it will be difficult to make too much profit.
Then Zero Run launched the C11, which brought the advantages of zero run full stack self-development to the extreme. Everyone knows the Model Y, which was shocked by its price reduction to 300,000 levels, while the zero-run C11 has the title of half-price Model Y. 100 kilometers of acceleration of 4.8 seconds, endurance of 550km, very high intelligent configuration, but only sold from 159,800 yuan, indeed gave the market a considerable shock.
But shock turned into shock, and C11's ability to deliver is still a problem. Zero running is also a loss all the way, losing 307 million yuan in 2018, 588 million yuan in 2019, losing 1.39 billion yuan in 2020, but it has eased in 2021, "only" losing 860 million yuan. Although this quota is not so exaggerated in the new forces, there are car companies that have lost tens of billions of cars, but the "transformation" ability of zero running has always been a problem, and it is not known how long it can last.
Kung Fu Cars feel that zero running is more suitable for technology companies, and they can even create domestic AI autopilot chips such as Lingxin 01. Selling cars is a very comprehensive thing, to integrate resources, to be able to shout, but also to serve, perhaps specifically to climb the science and technology tree, but also more suitable for zero running.
(4) Gaohe automobile, finally no longer high cold?
Recently, Gaohe Automobile also reported the news of an IPO in Hong Kong, and publicized that it was preparing to raise no more than 500 million US dollars, which is really imaginative. Prior to this, Ding Lei, the founder of Gaohe, said that Gaohe would not have several rounds of investment in A, B, C and D, because they had original capital from the United States, and there was government investment.
Preparing to go public and raise funds now, and then claiming that you only want to raise no more than $500 million, is really confusing.
At present, Gaohe only has one car on sale, that is, HiPhi X, with a starting price of 570,000 yuan and a top version to sell to 800,000. When HiPhi X was listed before, everyone was in an uproar, but Gaohe was very calm and claimed that it was coming to play Porsche Taycan. From the perspective of the market, the cumulative sales volume of Gaohe HiPhi X in 2021 is 4237 vehicles, of which the delivery volume reached 919 vehicles in December last year, and 550 vehicles were sold in January this year.
But Porsche doesn't eat on the Taycan, and Gaohe can't make money on HiPhi X. In fact, most of the top luxury cars do not make money, even Tesla, although it is based on the Model S, but the final profit is still based on the Model 3 and Model Y.
Kung Fu Car vaguely felt that Gao He was playing a big game in the next game, but he could not get a glimpse of the whole chess game now. Including the IPO information this time, it still reveals a bit of confusion.
But fortunately, its car we most people can not afford to buy, just wait and see, to see what kind of waves it will eventually toss out.
【Kung Fu Shooting】
At present, several major second-tier car-making new forces have come out of the news of the IPO in Hong Kong, which in our view is actually a helpless move. Looking at the current global investment environment, the financing environment in the United States is extremely unfriendly, and the threshold for A-shares/sci-tech innovation board is relatively high.
Only a listing in Hong Kong, which is relatively loose and has few constraints, is their best financing opportunity.
As the saying goes, money is not omnipotent, but without money it is impossible.
Driven by the pressure of "unwinding" from early investors, the time cost paid by these new second-tier car-making forces for listing is also increasing day by day.
Of course, each of their problems cannot be solved simply through financing.
For example, WM needs to get rid of the crisis of trust, United needs to break through to the high end, zero run to prove that self-research can eventually be transformed into economic benefits, and Gaohe needs to open up the road to profitability.
In addition to the need for a large amount of "grain and grass" as logistics, it is also necessary to further improve the hard power of enterprises in all aspects. In the end, who can take the lead in making the strength of the system solid, who is likely to finally impress consumers and become the key to the breakthrough.