There were two news stories yesterday, which are interesting to watch in contrast.
One is that Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory was finally approved to officially start construction, and Musk personally handed over the keys to the first owners and once again improvised a awkward dance. The start of the Berlin factory is undoubtedly a good thing for Tesla enthusiasts in China, because only if Tesla gradually achieves self-sufficiency in Europe, Tesla's nearly five-month booking cycle in China will gradually shorten.
The other is that Xu Jiayin, chairman of the board of directors of Evergrande Group, did not attend the global investor conference call yesterday, but participated in the mobilization meeting of Evergrande Automobile. The theme of the mobilization conference is very chronological, called "Dagan three months to achieve Hengchi 5 mass production". At the meeting, Xu Jiayin instructed, "On June 22, we must achieve the mass production of Hengchi 5 and lay a solid foundation for the healthy and sustainable development of Evergrande's automobile industry."
In February this year, Hengchi 5 boarded the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's new car announcement, marking that the product can automatically obtain sales qualifications after the end of the publicity period. However, from being eligible for sales to building a car to complete sales, there are still several mountains of mass production, channel construction and market promotion, which require sustained and considerable capital investment. At the Evergrande Global Investor Conference that Xu Jiayin did not attend yesterday, Shaun, executive director of Evergrande, revealed that Evergrande's direct debt abroad was as high as $21.7 billion. Huge debts and inevitable defaults make it difficult for Evergrande enterprises to have normal financing channels, and creditors who have been defaulted can request the freezing of enterprise liquidity and collateral in accordance with the law, which makes the normal operation of enterprises face great challenges.
Perhaps many people have no concept of the $21.7 billion figure, let's make a comparison: Tesla delivered 936,222 products worldwide in 2021, making it the world's highest-selling new energy vehicle company. At the same time, tesla's annual gross profit margin of auto products reached a staggering 29.3%, and it is also the world's most profitable car company.
What is this concept? You know, Toyota Motor, which was once the most calculating in the automotive industry, has a gross profit margin of less than 20%. However, even for such a new energy vehicle company with the highest sales volume in the world and the industry's profit margin, Tesla's annual gross profit is only 13.6 billion US dollars, which is not enough to repay two-thirds of Evergrande's direct overseas debt.
In this way, even if Musk shoots, he still can't save Boss Xu and his Evergrande car. In the automotive industry, the annual gross profit exceeds 20 billion US dollars, and the only people who can help Xu pay off the direct debts overseas are the few veteran car giants such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Toyota who can help The boss pay off the direct overseas debts by working hard for a year.
Boss Xu really has to cheer up!