Looking back at the successful delivery volume in 2021, is Xiaopeng a successful counterattack, or has it been underestimated?
Author | The king from the planet Magnesia is full
As the former third brother in "Wei Xiaoli", Xiao Peng's financial report came a little later than the two "brothers".
Last night, before the opening of the US stock market, Xiaopeng announced the fourth quarter of 2021 & 2021 full-year financial report, compared with the first camp of the new car-making forces, Weilai and ideals, can be described as bright spots.
In 2021, Xiaopeng's operating income reached 20.99 billion yuan (US$3.2935 billion), up 259.1% year-on-year, of which the fourth quarter operating income of 8.56 billion yuan, exceeding the expected 8.12 billion yuan; the annual gross profit margin reached 12.5%, an increase of 7.9% over the previous year. The full year's net loss was RMB4,863.1 million, including a net loss of RMB1.29 billion for the fourth quarter, and Xiaopeng cash reserves of RMB43,543.9 million (US$6,833 million) as of December 31, 2021.
The most noteworthy is, of course, the volume of deliveries. In 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile surpassed WEILAI and Ideal with a total delivery of 98,155 vehicles (this is also the first time that Xiaopeng surpassed WEILAI in annual deliveries), an increase of 263% from 27,041 units in 2020; of which, the fourth quarter delivery volume was 41,751 units, which also set a record high for Xiaopeng's single-quarter delivery.
In the subsequent earnings call, Xiaopeng Automobile founder He Xiaopeng also said that in late February and early March this year, new orders quickly returned to the peak season level in December last year, although the epidemic affected the delivery rhythm in some regions, and the delivery volume in March was still close to last year's peak level. Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 33,500-34,000 units in the first quarter of 2022. This means that Xiaopeng is significantly exceeding the delivery guidelines of ideal and NIO in the Q1 quarter, and is expected to win the delivery championship in the new car-making forces for the third consecutive quarter.
For such a financial report, the capital market's reaction was quite positive, the U.S. stock market on the day, Xiaopeng stock price rose more than 6% before the market, and finally closed at the close, Xiaopeng reported a closing price of $27.13.
At present, the traditional pattern of Wei Xiaoli is being broken, and Xiao Pengyin has a tendency to "become a faction of its own".
A model hit the world, Xiaopeng urgently needs more "P7"
In 2021, which model will let Xiaopeng take off? The answer is naturally the P7 that Xiaopeng once "bet desperately".
According to the data, in 2021, the cumulative delivery volume of Xiaopeng P7 was 60569 vehicles, up 302% year-on-year, far exceeding the 7865 vehicles of the P5. And since the first quarter, the growth rate of P7 has also been increasing.
If you add the data for the first two months of 2022, as of February 28, 2022, the cumulative delivery of P7 has exceeded 85,000, while the total delivery of Xiaopeng's smart electric vehicles has exceeded 157,000. It can be said that P7 is single-handedly supporting Xiaopeng's "half of the country".
For such an ace product, Xiaopeng, who urgently needs to expand the scale effect, will naturally continue to let it increase. On March 28, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, revealed in the 2021 earnings report results conference call that in 2022, Xiaopeng Motors will hit the P7 single-month sales target of exceeding 10,000 vehicles. At present, the 100,000th car of Xiaopeng P7 has officially rolled off the production line last week, becoming the first pure electric new power model to exceed 100,000 mass production. At the same time, Xiaopeng also released the Black Special Edition model Xiaopeng P7 562E Black Label Edition.
However, Xiaopeng is not ideal after all, and will not rely on a model to fight the world for a long time. At the earnings report performance conference, He Xiaopeng also revealed that Xiaopeng Automobile will launch two new model platforms and its first model in 2023, namely the C-class car platform and the B-class car platform. The new platform will inherit and develop Xiaopeng Automobile's continuous leading aesthetic design capabilities, electrification and intelligent driving capabilities, as well as advanced manufacturing processes, and the new platform will help Xiaopeng Automobile obtain strong cost control capabilities and cover a wider range of user groups in the mid- and high-end market with huge growth potential.
Moreover, the outside world has been a high degree of attention Xiaopeng Automobile's first medium and large SUV Xiaopeng G9, which is currently progressing smoothly, PT production prototypes have been off the production line from the factory, will be officially listed on sale as scheduled in the third quarter of this year, and are expected to officially open pre-sale at the Beijing Auto Show held in April this year. But the reporter noted that beyond many people's expectations, the G9 is positioned as a large five-seat SUV, without 6-seat and 7-seat versions. This also means that in the SUV market, Xiaopeng and Ideal will not be "hard and hard" for the time being.
For the G9, He Xiaopeng has high hopes, he said, G9 "is expected to be another big killer in the smart pure electric medium and large SUV market after the P7 becomes a hit." ”
Continuous growth of research and development, support xiaopeng's future imagination space
As The first self-developed enterprise known as China's first intelligent driving full-stack self-research, R&D investment has always been the data that the outside world pays more attention to Xiaopeng.
According to the financial report, in 2021, Xiaopeng invested 4.11 billion yuan in R&D for the whole year, exceeding the previous estimate of 4 billion yuan of R&D investment, an increase of 138.4% year-on-year.
In terms of quarters, Xiaopeng invested 535.1 million yuan in research and development in the first quarter, 863.5 million yuan in the second quarter, 1.2642 billion yuan in the third quarter, and 1.451 billion yuan in the fourth quarter.
At the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum a few days ago, He Xiaopeng said that Xiaopeng Automobile has invested a total of 9 billion yuan in research and development, and the proportion of R& D personnel has reached 40% of the total number of Xiaopeng employees.
Where is the money spent? According to the annual report, the year-on-year and month-on-month increase in R&D investment was mainly due to the increase in employee compensation due to the increase in R&D personnel and the increase in expenses related to the development of new models – which is also in line with the development progress of new models such as the G9.
The reporter believes that in addition to the development of new models, Xiaopeng's NGP function upgrade optimization and intelligent assistance system Xpilot 4.0 should occupy an important position in research and development investment.
Among them, the NGP function is about to launch an important upgrade in Xiaopeng's Xpilot 3.5 version - adding a new core function city NGP, which means that Xiaopeng's intelligent auxiliary driving function applies a new planning algorithm, and its service capabilities begin to come from high-speed scenes to urban scenes; while Xiaopeng is expected to launch Xpilot 4.0 in 2023 will achieve high-speed and all-scenario intelligent assisted driving in the city, and it is expected that its penetration rate in sales models will exceed 50%.
In addition, looking back at the past year, the black technology in Xiaopeng ecological enterprises has emerged in an endless stream, from Xiaopeng machines and horses to flying cars, which undoubtedly gives the market more imagination space.
Although compared with Weilai and Ideal, Xiaopeng's R&D investment only occupies the middle position (Weilai's R&D investment in 2021 is 4.5 billion yuan, the ideal is 3.29 billion yuan), but Xiaopeng occupies the chief of the "three fools" with a R&D revenue ratio of 19.58%, and Ideal and NIO rank second and third with 12.18% and 12.71% respectively, compared with Xiaopeng is still the one who is more willing to spend money in the "three fools".
There are also hidden dangers in the bright eyes
Although Xiaopeng's financial report is remarkable, many hidden dangers are still hidden behind it.
First of all, gross margin is still Xiaopeng's weakness. Compared with the gross profit margin of about 20% of Weilai and Ideal, the gap between Xiaopeng's 12.5% is large, and looking back, the gross profit margin of the best three quarters last year did not exceed 14%. Especially in the fourth quarter, when deliveries were the best, Xiaopeng's gross margin slipped to 10.9% under the pressure of rising supply chain costs.
He Xiaopeng is naturally aware of this, which is why he emphasized at the earnings call that the gross profit margin of new models including the G9 and the gross profit margin of the company as a whole will be structurally improved. According to its statement, Xiaopeng Automobile's medium- and long-term goal is to increase the company's overall gross profit margin to more than 25%. And with the help of scale effects and operating leverage, the expense ratio will continue to decline.
In addition, the continuous loss is still an urgent problem that Xiaopeng needs to solve. Compared with Weilai, Ideal and other car companies, cost control is currently the short board of Xiaopeng. Taking the fourth quarter with the best delivery performance as an example, leaving aside the R&D costs, Xiaopeng's sales costs were as high as 7.5327 billion yuan, an increase of 185.2% from 2.6408 billion yuan in the same period of 2020 and an increase of 53.8% from 4.8991 billion yuan in the third quarter of 2021.
Although He Xiaopeng stressed at the 2021 earnings results call that with the help of scale effects and operating leverage, the expense ratio will continue to decline. However, considering that Xiaopeng is currently actively laying out the background of the declining proportion of directly operated stores and authorized franchise stores, for Xiaopeng, the road to controlling costs will still be more difficult.
At the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, He Xiaopeng said that the second half of intelligent driving will soon come. For Xiaopeng, who has gone from the "tail seat" to the "chief", in the face of subsidies retreating and the rising cost of the supply chain, the new "second half" has also begun.