Introduction: Compared with the ideal car with similar sales, Weilai Automobile's loss is more than 12 times that of the former. Fortunately, Nio has money!
On March 25, Weilai Automobile, one of the leading car companies in the new car manufacturing force, announced the financial data for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021 after ideal automobile. Its operating income last year was 36.14 billion yuan, an increase of 122.3% year-on-year; gross margin was 18.9%, up 740 basis points from the gross profit margin of 11.5% in 2020.
For the full year of 2021, WEILAI had a net loss of 4.02 billion yuan, a loss of 5.3 billion yuan from 2020, narrowing by 24.3%, which performed well; but the ideal car lost 320 million yuan in the same period and achieved a net profit of 295 million yuan in the fourth quarter of last year.
But Weilai has 55.4 billion yuan of capital reserves on hand, which can't help but remind people of the self-questioning and self-answering sentence when Xiaomi Lei Jun built the car, what do we have? We have money!
1) Is the vehicle sales business still outstanding?
In 2021, WEILAI Automobile's annual operating income can increase by 122.3% year-on-year, mainly by the "support" of automobile sales revenue. Its automotive business generated sales of RMB33.17 billion last year, up 118.5% year-on-year and accounting for 91.86% of NIO's total revenue.
Ideal Automobile's auto business sales last year increased by 181.5% year-on-year to 26.13 billion yuan. In such a comparison, the production and sales business of Weilai Automobile in 2021 will appear to be flat, and there is even a trend of being caught up or even surpassed by latecomers.
First, Weilai Automobile's sales performance in 2021 is not satisfactory.
Affected by the epidemic, chips, production line adjustments and other factors, WEILAI Automobile lost the throne of the first sales volume of new domestic car-making forces in 2021, but Weilai still handed over the answer sheet of 91,429 new cars sold throughout the year, an increase of 109.1% year-on-year, and doubled sales for two consecutive years. Among them, a total of 25,034 vehicles were sold in the fourth quarter, an increase of 44% year-on-year, and the growth rate was only 2.4% month-on-month, which was the lowest growth rate in the past seven quarters.
Horizontally, WEILAI still maintains the first echelon of sales of new car-making forces, ranking behind Xiaopeng Automobile (98155 units) and before Ideal Automobile (90491 vehicles). However, it is undeniable that the growth momentum of Weilai is obviously not enough, and it is urgent to inject new products into power.
On the other hand, the gross profit margin of NIO in 2021 has increased significantly compared with 2020, but the growth rate of the high-end market is reduced, which may affect the overall performance of NIO.
According to NIO's financial report, in 2020, the gross profit margin of NIO's vehicles was 12.7%; in 2021, this figure rose to 20.1%; and the gross profit margin of vehicles in the fourth quarter reached 20.9%, showing an overall upward trend.
According to Nio's financial report, the profitability of its vehicle business increased in 2021, mainly due to a number of cost optimizations and supply chain efficiency improvements.
I have to say that Weilai Automobile seems to have a set of cost control. In the second price increase of new energy vehicles this year, nearly 20 car companies, including Ideal and Xiaopeng, have issued price increase statements, but Weilai Automobile has clearly stated that there is no price increase plan and has become the "most beautiful retrograde".
However, on March 26, NIO said it expected to raise prices for the redesigned models in May, including the 2022 ES8, ES6 and EC6. This seems to confirm Li's thoughts, the price is negotiated, and the price will rise when the time comes.
By holding high, The brand premium of Weilai Automobile itself is relatively strong, but even so, in order to ensure the level of profitability, to some extent, Weilai still has to increase the price of the modified model to ensure that the 2022 financial report will not be too ugly.
In 2021, because the new energy vehicle market is hot, Weilai Automobile has stabilized its sales performance with the "old three" of ES8, ES6 and EC6 without launching any new cars. In 2022, NIO will deliver three new cars in succession - ET7, ET5, ES7 to cope with the increasingly competitive market.
Perhaps out of trust in NIO's second-generation technology platform NT2, a number of securities institutions are optimistic about NIO's car sales this year. CITIC Securities predicts that considering that there are three new models on the market in 2022, NIO's sales are expected to increase by about 100% year-on-year.
But the problem is that in the face of supply chain problems, Weilai also needs to solve the cost of chips and power batteries. It is interesting to note that there is recent news that WEILAI may purchase BYD's lithium iron phosphate batteries.
2) Turnaround after 2 years? Plenty of money on hand
Although WEILAI's operating income in 2021 reached 36.14 billion yuan, according to WEILAI's 2021 financial report, last year's net loss for the whole year was 4.02 billion yuan, although it decreased by 24.3% year-on-year, but the loss amount was more than 12 times that of ideal automobile. Among them, the net loss in the fourth quarter was 2.14 billion yuan, an increase of 54.4% over the fourth quarter of 2020 and an increase of 156.6% over the third quarter of 2021.
This number may be a "loser" compared to the ideal car that is eager to cut a penny in half. According to ideal automobile announced its 2021 financial report, ideal net profit loss last year was only 322 million yuan, and in the fourth quarter, it still achieved a positive net profit.
However, on the bright side, Weilai Automobile has been reducing losses. From 2018 to 2020, the annual net loss of WEILAI is 23.37 billion yuan, 11.422 billion yuan and 5.616 billion yuan, respectively, so it seems that the loss figures are indeed decreasing rapidly.
Li Bin, chairman of Weilai Automobile, also predicted that the company will achieve breakeven in the quarter in Q4 2023 and breakeven in the whole year of 2024, which also means that in the next year or so, WEILAI will continue to burn money and continue to live. In the past four years, NIO's cumulative net loss reached 44.4 billion yuan, with an average annual loss of 11.1 billion yuan.
In the face of consecutive years of losses, can Weilai's capital chain still hold up?
According to the financial report, as of December 31, 2021, NIO's cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investment balances were 55.4 billion yuan.
In addition to the funds already in hand, WEILAI Automobile can theoretically raise funds after 6 months of listing on the Hong Kong stock market. For a period of time, the money on Weilai's account seemed to be enough to burn, but it was not enough to make people put their minds at ease.
3) Weilai gambles again? bet
With the development of the vehicle sales business, Weilai Automobile now has a certain degree of "independent hematopoietic ability", coupled with abundant cash reserves, Weilai Automobile does have the capital to continue to "play" on the table of new energy vehicles, but the victory or defeat is still unpredictable.
In the author's opinion, Weilai Automobile and the ideal car seem to be two extremes, the ideal franchise, for more than two years, an ideal ONE "package the world", of course, will soon launch a new model L9; and Weilai Automobile is "all-round attack", not only in the manufacture of electric vehicles to create the first charging + battery replacement mode, but also intends to show its skills in the field of mobile phones.
In 2021, NIO has built more than 1,300 substations, 6,000 supercharge piles, and 10,000 destination charging piles.
Along with Weilai's inflated ambitions, the various expenses in the report also "inflated".
According to NIO's financial report, its R&D expenditure in 2021 was 4.59 billion yuan, an increase of 84.6% year-on-year; of which R&D expenditure in the fourth quarter was 1.83 billion yuan, an increase of 120.5% year-on-year, an increase of 53.3% month-on-month, and the increase in expenses was mainly due to the increase in labor costs, as well as the incremental cost of design and research and development of new products, technologies, including NAD assisted driving systems and newly released MODELS such as ET7, ET5 and ES7.
It is also due to the sharp increase in research and development expenses in the fourth quarter, WEILAI's net loss in the fourth quarter was as high as 2.14 billion yuan in the case of revenue of 9.9 billion yuan, an increase of 49.1% year-on-year, accounting for half of the annual loss. There has been a situation in which income has increased, and losses have expanded. Some analysts believe that this is mainly the initial investment made by Weilai to prepare to enter the low-end electric vehicle market.
In contrast, in the fourth quarter of 2021, Ideal Automobile invested a total of 1.23 billion yuan in research and development expenses, an increase of 228.7% year-on-year, but achieved a net profit of nearly 300 million yuan; its company's research and development expenses in 2021 were 3.29 billion yuan, an increase of 198.8% year-on-year.
Compared with less than 4.6 billion yuan of research and development expenses, NIO's cumulative sales and management expenses of 7 billion yuan in 2021 are really surprising. After all, the sales management expenses of Ideal Automobile last year were only 3.49 billion yuan, and it seems that there is still a lot of room for cost control in Weilai.
By the end of 2021, NIO has built 46 NIO centers and 341 NIO spaces, 60 service centers, and 179 authorized service centers, covering about 150 cities.
Can Weilai Automobile's high investment be exchanged for a better future? There are many variables involved in this, not only to see whether the power exchange model of Weilai Automobile, which is different from other new energy vehicle companies, can achieve profitability, but also to see whether Weilai's product sinking plan can be successful, and whether the upgrading of the production line of Jianghuai Weilai factory can be successfully completed.