Text | Jiang Xiaohua
The day before yesterday, Geely Automobile (Hong Kong stock code 00175) released the 2021 annual financial report, the report shows: In 2021, Geely Automobile's core financial indicators continued to improve, the revenue of listed companies exceeded 100 billion, achieving double-digit growth year-on-year; the overall average bicycle revenue was 88,000 yuan, an increase of 9% year-on-year; the new business segment was in the ascendant, and the revenue of technical services and licensing services increased by 245% year-on-year; the total cash reached 28 billion yuan, a new high for the company.
Since the beginning of the fourth quarter of last year, China's automotive industry has entered a long period of adjustment in the capital market. Most auto companies with stable and good fundamentals have a sluggish stock price, with a huge decline of 30-60%. So much so that there is a passage circulating among people in the auto industry that auto people dare not buy auto stocks, because the ups and downs are all junk stocks, and the plummets are all high-performing stocks.
At the annual report press conference the day before yesterday, Gui Shengyue, chief executive officer and executive director of Geely Automobile Holdings Co., Ltd., said that there is a significant gap between the stock price of Geely Automobile's listed companies and the actual value of the company, and Geely Automobile has sufficient upward growth momentum in the future, and believes that market performance will eventually return to the level that matches the actual value of the company.
Of course, Mr. Gui's words are not encouraging everyone to buy geely cars now, and the old mage who has been facing the harsh Hong Kong Stock Exchange for many years will not make such an unassuming mistake. Only in terms of the obvious value of Geely Automobile now, the market value of 100 billion Hong Kong dollars does have a visible undervaluation with the naked eye.
However, in my opinion, the most critical reason to firmly hold 00175 is not the difference between the company's current actual value and market value, but the future of this Chinese auto brother, that is, Gui Shengyue mentioned in his speech, Geely Automobile has sufficient upward growth momentum in the future.
Where does this sustained momentum come from? I would like to take the market progress seems to be a thousand miles a day, but geely automobile development is not the most anxious new energy sector as a representative, to talk to the villagers.
At the turn of the third and fourth quarters of last year, Geely Automobile's automotive research institute in Hangzhou Bay grandly released his 2025 strategy, and at this year's annual report press conference, geely's leaders' speeches were basically a reiteration of the 2025 strategy. In fact, even for Geely itself, the release of this strategy is a little later than expected. It is not difficult to deduce that this should have been a complete 5-year plan.
But for the industry as a whole, it's not too late at all. On the contrary, this strategic plan with intelligent electrification as the core is the first one I have seen at present, and the strategy of the whole process of this round of automobile industry revolution is the most complete and the most valuable reference value for the transformation of large car companies, which reflects Geely's comprehensive thinking on the path of industrial change, and based on such thinking, the full play of its own advantages.
Compared with Volkswagen's ongoing electrification of the brave man's broken wrist, and Toyota's practice of throwing out dozens of pure electric models in one breath, I think Geely's 2025 strategy has the following more worthy of detail.
First, we will never follow the policy of the moment, as well as the high decibel interference of the market, and abandon the pursuit of diversified new energy routes. This is mainly reflected in the fact that Geely will begin to focus on the oil-electric hybrid and super hybrid this year, and in 2022, we will see as many as 10 new energy products listed.
Gasoline-electric hybrids have always been in the new energy arrays listed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, but except for some local support for local enterprises, oil-electric hybrids have never received any reasonable subsidies. With the continuous decline of new energy subsidies, many places have gradually canceled the support for plug-in hybrids.
However, Geely believes from the beginning that in the development trajectory of automobile energy conservation with zero emission as the end, hybrid is an important intermediate link that cannot be bypassed or should not be bypassed. This is the real demand of the market.
For radical consumers, direct pure electricity is certainly an acceptable option. However, if the new energy sector wants to smoothly complete the revolution of fuel vehicles, then providing multi-level choices, rather than either-or choices, is the inevitable way.
However, in order to play a sense of independent hybrid existence in the state that Toyota has become strong and Europe and the United States have basically abandoned, and effectively make such products into pillar products for a period of time in the future, Geely believes that it is necessary to make technologies that have leading advantages in multiple dimensions such as energy saving, non-disturbing electrification education, and intelligence.
As a result, we see Geely achieve the world's highest thermal efficiency level of 43.32% thermal efficiency of hybrid vehicles, which brings more than 40% fuel economy, while the acceleration and handling performance of the vehicle also achieves breakthroughs.
We will soon see that the pure electric endurance exceeds 100 kilometers, and the high-function version exceeds 200 kilometers of plug-in hybrid models. Within this year, it will cover from the Emgrand product line to the flagship model of Lynk & Co priced at more than 400,000. This means that you're choosing a car that has no mileage and energy replenishment anxiety at all, but at the same time, you spend most of your time driving electric. This is the best option for electrification education for "silent majority" consumers.
At the same time, Geely's new energy, there is another characteristic, that is, in the process of new energy, it never ignores the core expectations of consumers, such as safety and intelligence, because a class of products represents the most cutting-edge new energy technology.
Even fuel products, such as the China Star series, have always strived to subvert their peers in terms of intelligence, which is the key to the rapid expansion of market share of geely's high-end series. This is especially true of Geely's oil-electric hybrid and "super electric hybrid" series, all of which are configured according to the intelligent architecture of the Geely 4.0 era. In the hybrid model, Geely Ray's Sanity Hi · For the first time, X implemented the FOTA of the powertrain. And the vehicles are equipped with adaptive, self-learning energy intelligent management capabilities.
It is worth mentioning that the Geely China Star series, after the impact of several strong products that subvert the market, has formed a beacon effect for the Geely brand, through the China Star series, a Chinese brand, for the first time relying on the existing brand itself, rather than creating a new brand, completed a breakthrough that greatly broke through the price ceiling.
This lighthouse effect will be more prominent in Geely's super electric hybrid era, and even in the era of pure electricity. The success of the Chinese star shines brightly, and it is the brightest stroke of the beginning of the Geely 4.0 era. He opened up the broad development space of the Geely brand, ended the inefficient development framework of Geely in the narrow price space in the 3.0 era, and will inevitably enhance the market image and market capacity of the Geely brand as a whole, which is the basis for geely automobile bicycles to achieve a substantial increase in revenue in this year's financial report.
In Geely's new energy era, with the blessing of pure electricity technology supported by super electromix and haohan platform, the space above China Star has been expanded to 300,000 levels. As the most widely-spoken and popular car brand under Geely Automobile, the Geely brand has been paved by the Chinese star in one fell swoop.
On New Year's Day this year, in the 2022 opening draft I wrote, I predicted that the energy iteration of oil to electricity, no matter from which aspect, cannot be smooth, and there may be repeated links ranging from national policy and diplomacy to the open and secret struggle of industrial participants, and it is impossible to be as smooth as some power-up bigwigs say. The trend of the tram market in the beginning of the year and the various conditions of the industrial chain also confirm this judgment.
Hybrid products, including plug-in hybrids, will undertake the largest user transformation of traditional fuel vehicles in the first stage of electrification. This is the market path that most conforms to the logic of the market.
The premise of this sentence is that Gilly Ray's divine intellect Hi · The answer given by X Hybrid: companies must provide the market with products that meet the expectations of the times in terms of intelligence, energy saving and the performance of the car itself. Instead of saying, just build a hybrid car. It is like many companies say electrification, it seems that as long as the oil is changed to electricity, the transformation is completed. Such product logic does not meet the requirements of the times, and it will be difficult to transform and upgrade.
When I talk to almost all the large-scale car companies in the transformation about the future and talk about ideals, the first sentence is always that we must base ourselves on our own advantages. What is based on its own advantages, Geely's Thunder God Intelligence Hi · X hybrid is.
The adherence to the diversified new energy strategy is not only a comprehensive review of the multi-directional nature of the new energy path, but also a firm and loyal idea that market demand determines the direction of enterprises. The transformation of many industries tells us that large enterprises can only achieve the ultimate victory in the face of the transformation of change and change.
In fact, in 2022, we have seen a number of independent brands and joint venture brands, invariably in the field of hybrid and plug-in hybrid, the previously noisy electrification of the Great Leap Forward path, will return to the due path from this year, and in these products, Geely's Lei Shen Zhi Qing Hi · The X-Hybrid Legion is undoubtedly the market leader.
Second, Geely does not change its rhythm because of market fluctuations, and it will not abandon its own principles. Geely's principle, that is, the foundation of the company's development as China's first private vehicle manufacturer, is that he always pursues to make the best car that most people love and use in spirit; in action, it is always the best technology that has been mastered and put into mass production at the fastest speed.
Putting the best technology that has been mastered into mass production at the fastest speed may still be slow in the eyes of some people. Because the logic that is more acceptable is to take the lead no matter what, kill it and then say it. For example, the criticism that Geely has often faced in the past few years is that the Blue Geely action has not been realized as scheduled, especially in the field of pure electricity, and the development is slow.
However, for Geely, the scale of the pure electricity field must wait for his strongest architecture to be ready, although Geely has been preparing for this for eight years, longer than the creation time of most new forces. Geely's philosophy does not accept the creation of a batch of caterable tram slots like many companies. Geely's position is the representative enterprise of China's automobile industry, so in the face of the new era, Geely needs the same products that represent the highest level of China's automobile industry.
Last year, Geely simultaneously ushered in a substantial increase in the geometry of pure electric brands and the release and delivery of pure electric high-end brand Extreme Kr. Extreme Kr is Geely Automobile's new energy king bomb, he is not only the product of the two ace architectures of Haohan Architecture and GEEA 2.0 Electronic and Electrical Architecture, but also the choice of the enterprise transformation track.
Although in the initial delivery process, there were problems such as user complaints in Extreme Kr, but from two aspects, we see that the brand can quickly get rid of the shackles of starting and embark on the track of rapid development. First, all the problems that appear are caused by the periodic hectic chaos caused by the lack of experience in the early stage of a new type of automobile enterprise; second, the core link of the extreme krypton product has no problems, and the product strength is obviously outstanding in the same price point.
After a short hesitation, Extreme Kr quickly found his most comfortable rhythm. The production of new technologies and new production lines of automobile companies will inevitably have some problems in the early stage, but Geely has never had a dead knot in key technologies. This is the result of Geely's enterprise evolution, demanding technical perfection before it can be put into production.
Therefore, at the press conference the day before yesterday, An Conghui, chairman of Geely Automobile Group and CEO of Extreme Kr Intelligent Technology, stressed with confidence that Extreme Kr will achieve the goal of 650,000 vehicles per year in 2025. This is the confidence that comes with product confidence.
For Geely, the new energy it needs is to improve the products and solutions that can represent the future product direction in terms of development logic. The expectation of the market and the improvement of products are the fundamental reasons why Geely determines the new energy node, rather than the noisy and opportunistic ideas of capital.
At the same time, geometry as Geely's popular electric vehicle products, after a substantial growth in 2021, the product has been adjusted to a marketable channel, in 2022 Geely will open his G network and L network to empower incremental.
In addition, Geely has previously expressed that within Geely Automobile, every brand is a participant in the era of intelligent electrification, and Geely and Lynk & Co, as the core brands of Geely Automobile, will certainly not stop at electric mixing, but will follow the trend of clean energy all the way. In other words, Geely and Link & Co will each launch their own intelligent electrification products according to the characteristics and development needs of their own brands.
In my opinion, the pure electricity of Geely and Lynk & Co should be sooner rather than later. The success of Lynk & Co's unique brand positioning has proved that the power of personalization is far greater than that of the past when users buy car products. Today's Geely and Lynk & Co have completely achieved partial overlap in price ranges, not only not competing with each other, but on the contrary, it is an ideal situation of 1+1 greater than 2.
Therefore, in the field of intelligent electric vehicles with more segmentation of the crowd and more boundless design space, the three distinctive brands of Ji Kr, Lynk & Co and Geely can fully develop pure electric intelligent products synchronously according to the characteristics of the brand and the needs of development. This is also the powerful customization ability of the Haohan platform.
Therefore, at the moment when Geely is ready for architecture and technology, the rapid landing of Geely Pure Electric and Lynk & Co Pure Electric will play a completely positive role in the layout of the two brands themselves and geely's entire new energy products. This point, should learn from the initial experience of the launch of Lynk & Co, when Geely followed the traditional thinking, afraid that Geely would form a conflict with Lynk & Co, the result was to a certain extent delayed the pace of Geely upwards, resulting in Geely repeating the inefficient repeated car in the range of 100,000-150,000 in the range of several years; and Lynk & Co itself did not benefit from this protection, until Lynk & Co 03, Lynk & Co really found its proper position.
Pure electricity big opportunity at present, such experience, Geely can not fail to detect. Now that you're ready, you can't hesitate. With the current brand power of Geely and Lynk & Co, and the high awareness of Geely Pure Electric driven by Extreme Kr, the three brands are bound to form a potential energy that complements each other. This is precisely the unique advantage of Geely's combination of architectural advantages and brand advantages, which other companies do not currently have.
Third, Geely examines the whole process of the transformation of the new energy industry as complete, clear and rational.
In the 2025 strategy, the release of the Raytheon Powertrain brand, the clean energy of the whole industry chain and the full stack of intelligent technology self-research reflect this.
The connotation of Raytheon Power is very rich, which represents Geely's judgment on the rich needs of the future market for a variety of efficient powertrain products, and also expresses Geely's commitment to providing the best quality products for users who choose various energy methods.
We can see that many traditional enterprises in the process of electrification, in fact, the use of rough transformation path. Some large international enterprises have also weakened or even abandoned the continued investment in technologies and products other than pure electricity. Of course, the wording of large companies is full of passion and dreams when making these choices, but this is not the attitude that large companies that are responsible for their users should choose.
Geely is different, relying on the leading structural advantages established in the past decade, Geely chooses to develop, optimize and promote the strategy of synchronous research and development, optimization and promotion in the fuel, hybrid, pure electricity and other markets, starting from the Geely 3.0 era to today's 4.0 era, Geely strives to provide the best products of the same level in all power forms, and ensure that all power forms still maintain the ability to maintain efficient and sustainable development.
This excellent definition is not limited to the powertrain, but also reflected in the synchronization of the needs of the times, Geely's intelligent application, from high-end products to the shortest cycle of configuration of the whole series, which is Geely's response to the needs of the times in product ideas.
Li Donghui, CEO of Geely Holding Group, vice chairman and executive director of Geely Automobile Holdings Limited, mentioned at the annual report press conference that Geely's progress in technical services and licensing services in 2021 is gratifying. This is a clear return to a large enterprise like Geely for insisting on providing quality and sustainable product ideas to all customers.
With many companies abandoning the strategy of having technology for internal combustion engine products, Geely's business segment of technical services and licensing services will expand rapidly in the next ten to two decades. Wang Ruiping, senior vice president of Geely Automobile Group and president of Geely Power Research Institute, said that Geely's technology supply to the world is by no means whimsical.
Intelligent technology full-stack self-research, is the core of the intelligent 2025 strategy. This is also a soul proposition that Geely clearly answers in the face of the revolution in the automobile industry. So far, few other auto companies have given such a clear answer. This clarity is not only rhetorical, but also operational.
For example, the connotation of self-research mentioned by Geely obviously includes key aspects such as top chip design, big data analysis and application, and satellite network coverage. To be clear, when the automobile and even the travel industry entered the stage of intelligent industry, Geely did not intend to hand over the neck to others on the core proposition of determining the direction of the industry in the future, and Geely believed that intelligent autonomy itself was the key growth point of the industry in the future.
Although many Internet and communication technology companies, in order to cheer themselves up, regard their decision to enter the automotive industry as a dimensionality reduction blow, the core meaning is that they are obviously superior to automotive companies in terms of technology, big data and organizational forms. Yes, they will encounter many car companies that choose to give their intelligent backs to them, but they will also face car companies like Geely to harden their arrogance.
Where does Geely Automobile's confidence to achieve intelligent full-stack self-research come from? In fact, it is just eight words, boundless integration and self-innovation.
In the past so many years, Geely Holding Group, as well as Geely Technology Group, through mergers and acquisitions, investment, technical cooperation, co-creation, self-research and self-construction, etc., with a rare inclusive and open global enterprise posture, has accumulated a large number of cutting-edge technology foundations for Geely, which continue to promote development from various aspects such as technology, communication technology, finance, big data, etc., and are and will continue to feed Geely Automobile. Looking back, you can see that all of Geely's investment and financing projects are for the main body of Geely Automobile.
The core of self-innovation is Geely Automobile's transformation and stimulation of internal culture and human resources.
In the Spring Festival of 2021, An Conghui issued a declaration that Geely Automobile has no limits on talents, expressing the need to break the traditional corporate framework and support and cultivate talents needed by Geely in science and technology. This year's Spring Festival, Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue issued an advocacy to all Geely employees on the basis of which "let every Geely person shine". An enterprise can not be a technology-based talent, but everyone in a technology company should shine their own brilliance in accordance with the spirit of a technology enterprise, which is Geely's most profound innovation to itself. This is also a self-innovation that is difficult for many large enterprises to complete.
According to Gan Jiayue, two or three rounds of personnel have accumulated, as long as they do a good job, there is no gap that cannot be made up, and there is no core technology that cannot be mastered.
The answers to these key questions reflect Geely's complete understanding of the evolution path of the industry, and the two indispensable prerequisites for this recognition to fall into action are the core technical strength of leading and sustainable development, and the self-evolution ability of enterprises on the basis of consensus building.
Geely is to integrate the other side and stage of product new energy, enterprise technology and industrial revolution, user emotional expectations and actual needs and other era propositions together, forming the 2025 strategy, that is, Geely's intelligent electrification strategy.
In a nutshell, I think this is the most reflective strategy I've seen at the moment for a big automotive company. That's why I think 00175 is worth doing in the medium to long term value.
Because the most reassuring point of Geely is the company's strategic determination and the execution that matches it.
As Gan Jiayue, CEO of Geely Automobile Group, said: Since the establishment of Geely Automobile, the corporate strategy has not deviated, and the ups and downs of the enterprise are nothing more than the good or bad we have executed. Since the 2007 Ningbo Declaration, Geely has found a synchronicity between implementation and strategy, and has insisted on it to this day.