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Producer: Electric Planet News
Author: Fat Fei Classmate, Yu Fei
A few hours ago, Xiaopeng Motors released its 2021 fourth quarter and annual financial reports.
In 2021, the top three new cars in China will deliver more than 90,000 units, and they all released their 2021 annual reports in March. Before entering the analysis of Xiaopeng's annual report and the minutes of the conference call, let's first look at the comparison of the key data of the three annual reports:
Compared with Weilai and Ideal, the product coverage is wider, covering the market of 150,000-400,000 yuan, handing over 98,155 xiaopeng, and the sales volume ranks the highest among the three.
In addition, Xiaopeng achieved a total revenue of 20.988 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year growth rate of 259.1%, and a gross profit of 2.623 billion yuan. But this data shows
The key is that in terms of R&D investment, which represents investment in the future and determines how far it can go, Xiaopeng Automobile still spent 4.114 billion yuan in 2021, only slightly lower than Weilai, significantly higher than ideal.
After experiencing the brand renewal in 2021 and becoming the first year of Xiaopeng's attack with a new system, He Xiaopeng himself announced the important product plans for this year and even next year at the financial report meeting:
2022 P7 target to achieve monthly delivery of 10,000 units;
P5 deliveries approached P7 in the third quarter of 2022;
G9 officially launched in the third quarter of 2022;
Two new automotive platforms will be released in 2023;
2023 XPilot 4.0 officially pushed...
Listening to the whole meeting, we will think that Xiaopeng Motors hopes to seek a breakthrough in all aspects in 2022, whether it is products, technology, or systems.
Wanting to make all-round progress means that Xiaopeng needs to be ready to meet all-round challenges, and the official WeChat account of Xiaopeng Automobile uses "continue to ride the wind and waves" to describe 2022, which should be appropriate.
In addition to the numbers, what are the highlights of Xiaopeng Automobile's 2021 financial report, what is the fierce news that He Xiaopeng himself broke at the financial report meeting, and is there any new news in G9?
Let's get started right away.
First, the new forces will lose the crown in 2021, and whether they can be kept in 2022
From the perspective of product layout, Xiaopeng has a different particularity among many new forces.
Xiaopeng G3, P5, P7, plus the G9 listed in Q3 this year, Xiaopeng has formed a product system covering the price range of 150,000-400,000, and taking into account the diversification of SUVs and cars.
Just five days ago, the 100,000th Xiaopeng P7 was officially rolled off the production line, if the fixed language is set to "pure electric new power model", then the Xiaopeng P7 is indeed the "first" to break through 100,000 units.
Although as far as the brand is concerned, Weilai Ideal has already exceeded 100,000 units, but the ridicule of riders between different brands is ridiculed, and it is undeniable that in the new faction, Xiaopeng P7 is successful in the single category of pure electric cars.
In the whole year of 2021, Xiaopeng delivered a total of 98,155 new cars, of which the P7 exceeded 60,000 units, and Xiaopeng became the annual delivery champion of the new forces.
In this result, Q4 2021 is definitely a shining stroke.
In the quarter, Xiaopeng delivered a total of 41,751 vehicles, of which the P7 cut half of the country to 21,342 vehicles, helping the brand achieve continuous growth. In the earnings conference call, He Xiaopeng believes that the P7 is a well-deserved explosive model, and Xiaopeng's goal is to achieve P7 sales of more than 10,000 this year.
In October last year, the P5, the second sedan of the Xiaopeng family, officially began mass production. Although the P5 delivered 244 units in small batches during Q3, strictly speaking, the Q4 was the first quarter of the P5's full delivery, with the P5 delivering 7,621 units in those three months.
In fact, from the outside world, it seems that the delivery level of P5 is less than "expected", and the reasons for the difficulty of delivery come from the supply chain. In this regard, He Xiaopeng also said that with the easing of supply chain problems, he expects P5's sales volume in the second half of the year to reach the P7 level. We'll see this Flag in a few months.
The other flag is about sales. Xiaopeng's official delivery guidelines for the first quarter are 335,500-34,000 units – locking in the Q1 new car delivery champion in advance - and they believe that this will be the lowest quarter for Xiaopeng Automobile deliveries this year.
This means that Xiaopeng Automobile's sales target this year is more than 140,000 units, or more directly, an increase of 50%.
We're optimistic about this "flag," but what about you?
Interestingly, in this earnings press release and conference call, Xiaopeng made almost no disclosure to the veteran G3.
We may wish to do a simple subtraction, Xiaopeng's annual sales in 2021 are 98,155 units, minus 60,209 units of P7, and then subtract 7865 units of P5, you can roughly calculate the delivery volume of G3 in 2021 is 30,081 units.
From the perspective of a "veteran", the performance of G3 is actually not a "shame", although it is not as popular as P7, but it still contributes nearly one-third of Xiaopeng's sales in 2021 - from the perspective of the pattern, Xiaopeng is currently a state of P7 carrying the main force, G3 playing auxiliary, and P5 development.
He Xiaopeng has always had high hopes for the prospects of P7, especially P5, but in addition to the P7 target monthly sales of more than 10,000 and P5 catching up with P7, Xiaopeng is most looking forward to the performance of the next G9.
Unfortunately, before the new car was listed, Xiaopeng did not disclose a lot of information about this G9. He Xiaopeng confirmed that the G9 only has five seats, will not provide six and seven seats, about the latest progress, it is currently known that this car will be officially launched in Q3 this year.
But He Xiaopeng's expectations for the G9 are very high, his definition of the G9 is "representing Xiaopeng's highest level of independent research and development", and he is confident that the Xiaopeng G9 will become a hit in a medium-sized pure electric SUV.
Two new platforms, two new cars
In addition to the new G9 cars that have already been identified, Xiaopeng will also launch two new platforms for B-class cars and D-class cars in 2023, and release two new cars for the first time.
He Xiaopeng said that the new platform will have strong cost control capabilities and will apply advanced production technologies such as integrated die casting.
In terms of manufacturing, Xiaopeng currently has a joint venture with Zhengzhou Haima, a self-built Zhaoqing factory, and plans to build two new factories in Wuhan and Guangzhou.
For the new trend of several factories, Xiaopeng said that a few factories may reach the capacity of more than 500,000 years of production capacity, which is specific, He Xiaopeng did not specify. The known plans are 100,000 in Zhaoqing, 100,000 in Guangzhou, and 100,000 in Wuhan.
Third, in 2023, XPILOT 4.0 is coming: open man-machine co-driving
When sharing P5 deliveries, Xiaopeng shared a set of data: more than 50% of the total P5 delivered in the fourth quarter of 2021 can support XPILOT 3.0 or XPILOT 3.5.
This means that the buyers of the P5 have a strong demand for intelligence.
He Xiaopeng revealed that the current penetration rate of Xiaopeng models on sale is 20%, and he believes that with the launch of XPILOT 4.0 in 2023, this penetration rate will go to more than 50%.
In Q2 this year, Xiaopeng will complete the development of the urban NGP and gradually open this function in major cities with the rhythm of high-precision map approval. According to He Xiaopeng, the new architecture of XPILOT 3.5 has far exceeded expectations, and the number of 100 kilometers under the city can almost approach the level of high speed.
"The capabilities of urban NGP have approached the level of the domestic head Robotaxi, and even partially achieved catch-up."
He Xiaopeng is very satisfied with the current XP performance, and he expects more to launch XPILOT 4.0 next year, which is a product that combines a new software and hardware platform, and there will be four models equipped with this function in 2023 (P5 and P7 have two new cars to be released).
He believes that consumers will experience a significant technical generation gap, XPILOT 4.0 has a wider range of scenarios, higher-order automatic driving capabilities, and its popularity will usher in the advent of the era of human-machine co-driving.
"Once users get used to XPILOT, its penetration rate becomes very high, and the penetration rate of XPILOT 4.0 is likely to be much higher than 50%."
Regarding the judgment of automatic driving, He Xiaopeng believes that L4 is expected to be achieved by 2026, but as far as Xiaopeng's actual measured data is concerned, they are optimistic that this moment may come earlier, but He Xiaopeng stressed that "Xiaopeng did not say that L4 will be achieved in 2024."
At last year's Q3 earnings call, He Xiaopeng revealed that Xiaopeng Automobile will begin to explore the RoboTaxi business in Guangzhou in the second half of 2022, and set up a subsidiary, Guangzhou Pengxu Autonomous Driving Technology Co., Ltd. Early-stage vehicles will use the XPIOLT 3.5 system and gradually transition to XPILOT 4.0, with monthly test miles per vehicle expected to be between 8,000 and 10,000 km.
The first time I saw this news, I understood that this was a "sharpening knife" before the official launch of XPILOT 4.0, and Xiaopeng hoped to further sharpen XPILOT's algorithm through scenario-based operation.
After all, in the face of huge scenario-based data requirements, the current 20% penetration rate of existing users is still not enough, Xiaopeng's Robotaxi business is a powerful complement.
Fourth, the growth of the system
Battery costs are the focus of the supply chain in the conference call.
He Xiaopeng said that although the sales price was raised in March, in the context of high oil prices, the cost of using electric vehicles still has obvious advantages, and high-end electric vehicles in 2022 are actually facing greater growth opportunities.
At the same time, he also admitted that the battery supply did bring some challenges to Xiaopeng. For example, there are some models in the Xiaopeng system that could have been sold, but the delivery speed was "very slow", mainly because the supply of lithium iron phosphate batteries was insufficient, and "the demand for lithium iron batteries was far greater than the ability of partners to support them.".
Another original sentence is intriguing: "There are many battery partners, which are very valuable to Xiaopeng."
When asked how Xiaopeng copes with the battery challenge, He Xiaopeng predicted that the price of battery raw materials will "change somewhat" in the fastest 1 quarter and slower in 3 quarters.
Expanding to the entire industry, he believes that electric vehicles will still face the test of lack of cores and rising raw material prices in 2022. But in the medium and long term, "this is only a temporary problem encountered in the over-speed development of smart electric vehicles."
The cost of raw materials, Xiaopeng hopes to solve with process progress and efficiency optimization.
He Xiaopeng believes that adhering to the full-stack self-development of software, as well as the platforming of intelligent systems and power systems, can help them promote "huge changes" in the overall BOM cost. The end result is that starting with the G9, the gross profit margin of the model and the entire company will usher in a "structural change".
As for the specific gross margin target, he said it was set at 25% in the medium and long term.
In addition to the product system, service, sales and technical system are also the focus mentioned by He Xiaopeng.
As of January 17 this year, Xiaopeng Motors has deployed a total of 813 supercharging stations in 337 cities. The more important news is the Xiaopeng second-generation supercharging station that will land this year.
At the G9 conference of the Guangzhou Auto Show last year, Xiaopeng Automobile had already demonstrated the 480kW high-voltage supercharge pile known as the first "mass production laying", after He Xiaopeng also said that in the second quarter of this year, it would take the lead in laying 360kW superfill piles, "follow up later" 480kW superfill piles.
The 360/480kW supercharge pile is equivalent to 3-4 times that of the mainstream 120kW pile, and the official claim is "charging for 5 minutes, 200 km endurance". Whether the new supercharge system can be deployed in time and become a new competitiveness of Xiaopeng models is also the suspense left by Xiaopeng in 2022.
Another new one, from a new market.
He Xiaopeng said tonight that he will continue to use the "direct operation + licensing" sales store model in the global market.
Among them, on February 11 this year, Xiaopeng Europe's first direct-operated experience store has officially opened in Stockholm, Sweden. This is also Xiaopeng's first expansion in Europe after landing in Norway in 2020. Xiaopeng's European headquarters are also based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and offices in Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
In the first step of authorization, Xiaopeng chose to cooperate with local leading dealer groups such as Emil Frey NV Group in the Netherlands and Bilia Group in Sweden.
Also fully into Europe, this year's internationalization process of Xiaopeng and WEIlai will also become another focus of the two "competitive teammates".
5. Summary
Time to go back to the day before the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, xiaopeng brand renewal day.
He Xiaopeng said on the same day: "The new Xiaopeng will be a more international, cooler and younger technology brand. I hope that when you see Xiaopeng's products, you can think of the labels of intelligence, quality and coolness, and when you mention Xiaopeng as a company, you can realize that this is a company that keeps exploring and sticking to a sustainable path."
It's not a long sentence, but even if you want to achieve some of it, it's extremely difficult.
From the actions since the beginning of 2022, as well as the statement made at tonight's earnings report meeting, He Xiaopeng obviously hopes to do it all. Whether it's a full-scale foray into Europe, XPilot 4.0, or a new, lower-cost, higher-intelligence platform.
From the perspective of sales, Xiaopeng's 2021 is successful, but in the financial report, there are two figures worth noting.
One figure is the net loss in 2021, which is wider than in 2020 (as shown above); the other is that among the three Wei Xiaoli companies, Xiaopeng's "sales, general and administrative expenses" accounted for 25.28% of the total revenue, which is also the highest among the three.
Riding the wind and waves, Xiaopeng rides the wind of intelligent pure electricity, how many waves can be broken this year?
We soon found out.
(End)
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