summary
· The Xiaopeng G9 prototype has rolled off the production line and will be delivered in the third quarter, with only a 5-seat SUV model.
· Two new platforms and their first models will be launched in 2023, targeting the C-Class and B-Segment markets.
· The new platform will boost overall gross profit to more than 25%.
· In 2023, XPILOT4.0 will be officially launched, and in 2026, it will realize the landing of automatic driving.
Sell best, grow the fastest; "earn" the least, lose the most.
This is the Xiaopeng Car of 2021.
The market said to buy orders, and U.S. stocks rose more than 6.5% at one point after hours.
Xiaopeng, who won the crown of the new force for the first time, really shows a promising side of the future.
How Xiaopeng repeatedly mentioned at the performance meeting, in the short term, it is confident that the G9 will become a large-scale SUV hit and the P7 bicycle delivery will exceed 10,000. In the long run, Xiaopeng's gross profit will exceed 25%, and it will launch two new platforms and two new models in 2023, and achieve autonomous driving in 2026.
These "small targets" have poked at the excitement of investors.
However, compared with Weilai and ideal, the average selling price of Xiaopeng's bicycles is still a certain distance from the gross profit level. At the same time, the lack of supply chain management capabilities has led to a long delivery cycle, hidden concerns about sales increases brought about by price increases, and the XPOLIT selection rate is not as expected.
Xiaopeng Hongtu has been determined, how to win the first place in an all-round way?
Bicycle revenue and gross profit narrowed
Continue to trade losses for growth?
In 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's revenue reached 20.99 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 260% year-on-year, and it is the only company in "Wei Xiaoli" that has more than tripled its growth. Relying on the delivery of more than 41,700 new vehicles in the fourth quarter, Xiaopeng's revenue in the quarter also achieved considerable growth, reaching 8.6 billion yuan.
At the performance meeting, He Xiaopeng also said that nearly 80% of the increase in the fourth quarter came from non-first-tier cities. This also depends on the sinking of Xiaopeng's forward-looking layout channels in 2021.
The financial report shows that in 2021, Xiaopeng sales stores added 197 new stores. In the network expansion, the average sales volume of a single store can continue to increase, and it is not easy to reach 117 units in Q4.
But at the same time, the rapid expansion and layout has also brought high losses.
For the whole year of 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's net loss was 4.863 billion yuan, surpassing Weilai's 4.02 billion yuan and the ideal of 322 million yuan.
This is also related to its high R & D expenditure, investing 4.11 billion yuan in the whole year, and has achieved certain results in the mass production of lidar, automatic driving assist systems and cross-floor memory parking.
However, compared with Weilai's 4.6 billion yuan and ideal R&D investment of 3.3 billion yuan, the gap is not too big. This shows that although large losses have the reason for increasing R&D investment, cost control also accounts for a small proportion.
The contrast between gross profits is clear at a glance.
For the full year of 2021, Xiaopeng gross profit margin was 12.15%, compared with the ideal gross profit of 22.4% and WEILAI's 17.2%. Even under the premise of winning the sales volume, the gap between Xiaopeng's profitability and the two is still obvious.
Xiaopeng executives said that the main reason for the decline in gross profit is the restructuring of the model. Due to the climb in sales of P5 models, cycling revenue and overall gross profit have declined.
In addition, the narrowing of gross profit is also related to the ability of supply chain management.
Bai Yiyang, manager of the research department of CMB International, said that Xiaopeng's ability to control the supply chain is weaker than that of other new forces. The problem of short supply and demand for P7 lithium iron phosphate models also reflects that there may be problems in communication between the production side and suppliers.
However, on the whole, the net loss of Xiaopeng Automobile's bicycles is narrowing, and there is a scale effect that brings a good trend.
Three challenges
Price increase, supply guarantee, and expansion of production
The price increase of all Xiaopeng models has also brought a lot of uncertainty to the beginning of 2022.
On March 21, Xiaopeng Automobile announced a comprehensive price increase. Specifically, except for the 562E performance version of the P7, there is no price increase, and other versions of the model have increased in price to varying degrees. Among them, the P7 model's 670G, 670N and 670N+ prices increased the least, about 10,000 yuan.
It is worth noting that some models of the P7 exceeded 300,000 after the price increase, such as the 670E, which could not enjoy subsidies.
Some auto sales practitioners said that it will be difficult to obtain subsidies for some of the main models, "Now many popular options, such as smart cockpits can not be selected, can only guide customers."
Another insider revealed that after announcing the price increase, Xiaopeng's overall order volume has shown a sharp growth trend brought about by the "last train", with an average daily new order volume of thousands of units, which is almost doubled compared with before.
But he said, "The number of new orders in April may show a significant decline." ”
The main reason for the price increase is still the battery. According to statistics, batteries account for about 50% of the cost growth, and the increase ranges from a few thousand to ten thousand yuan. At the same time, the chip accounts for 20% of the cost, and the price increases by about two or three thousand. Although the scale effect is helpful for the cost reduction of vehicle manufacturing, this part of the decline is basically offset by the price increase.
"The increase is really too outrageous", if the price is not increased, the car company will hardly make money. Another independent analyst said that the current shortage of batteries facing the industry is not out of stock, but because the cost increase is too large to afford. He said that the increase of the new forces has been very restrained now, "if the cost is all transmitted to the consumer side, the entire new forces' cars are estimated to be unable to sell."
Some executives revealed at the performance meeting that "battery inventory in 2021 has been used for more than half", so when the supply chain problem has not been alleviated, there is no gross profit guidance.
However, in He Xiaopeng's view, the larger the scale of the battery, the higher the proportion of price increases, which is directly related to the cost. He believes that if the price increase is too small (car companies), there may be some new methods to cover the cost of price increases, but for Xiaopeng, this is more appropriate data.
"There are still big challenges in battery supply this year, the proportion of price increases is beyond our imagination, and we are still communicating." He Xiaopeng expects that in the second or third quarter of next year, China's battery supply situation will be greatly improved.
He Xiaopeng also said bluntly that in the medium and long term, the overall battery rise may be a good thing. Lithium mines are very many in the world, there is no shortage of supply, but this year there is not enough production, or the original production capacity has not been enlarged.
At the same time, supply chain issues have the potential to persist.
He Xiaopeng said that Shanghai is a key location in many supply chains, and the epidemic will bring great challenges.
On the issue of capacity. At present, the annual production capacity of the Zhaoqing plant is about 500,000 units, and the Guangzhou plant and the Wuhan plant under construction hope to achieve a production capacity of more than 500,000 units.
Sales expectations
Add models, reduce growth rate?
Xiaopeng officially expects that in the first quarter of 2022, the delivery volume will be about 335,500-34,000, and the revenue will be 7.3 billion. There was a certain decline from the fourth quarter, but the full-year forecast was more than 136,000 units (the first quarter estimate multiplied by four).
For the sales of different models, He Xiaopeng also gave expectations.
He said that in the long run, the P7 is still the main model, with a total of 60,569 vehicles delivered throughout the year, accounting for 62% of the total delivery volume of the year. This achievement ranks in the top three of the B-class pure electric sedans, and with the increase in P7 production capacity, this year will hit the single-month delivery of more than 10,000.
For the P5 model, more than 8,000 units were delivered in the first quarter of 2021, and it is believed that this data will continue to climb. After the supply chain problems ease, it will be close to the delivery volume of P7 in the second half of the year.
He Xiaopeng also revealed that the G9 model trial production car has been rolled off the production line and will be delivered in Q3 2022. At the results meeting, he confirmed that there would be no new models with 6 or 7 seats, and the G9 was a 5-seat SUV.
In 2023, Xiaopeng Motors will also launch two new model platforms and their first models, namely the C-class platform and the B-class platform.
The new platform will inherit and develop Xiaopeng Motors' continued leading aesthetic design capabilities, electrification and intelligent driving capabilities, as well as advanced manufacturing processes, such as ultra-large integrated die casting. At the same time, the new platform will also greatly improve Xiaopeng's cost control capabilities and cover a wider range of user groups in the mid- and high-end markets with huge growth potential.
On March 22, Bomin Electronics issued an announcement entitled "Announcement on wholly-owned subsidiaries receiving the notice of fixed-point development of Xiaopeng Automobile", indicating that Shenzhen Bomin has become a supplier of parts and components related to Xiaopeng Automobile's F30 model and E38 model, with an estimated project life cycle of 5 years and an estimated project transaction volume of RMB 250-300 million.
According to the information currently disclosed, the F30 and E38 should be the two models of the new platform.
Intelligent
XPILOT with Robotaxi
"The city and NPG launched this year will work better than Tesla."
In the interview session of the recent China Electric Vehicle 100 People's Conference, He Xiaopeng said.
According to the news of Xiaopeng Automobile's 2021 financial report performance meeting, the research and development of the core function city NGP of XPILOT3.5 is progressing smoothly, and after obtaining the approval of the relevant competent authorities, it is planned to launch the urban NGP in the first batch of cities at the end of the second quarter of this year. The biggest difference from the previous version is the addition of lidar, as well as a completely new planning algorithm.
According to the management, the urban NGP beta version is rapidly iterating, the security and user experience of each version are continuously improving, and the performance of XPILOT3.5 based on the new architecture in the urban scene far exceeds expectations.
In the P5 mass production car, the number of urban NGP takeovers per hundred kilometers has begun to approach the high-speed NGP, and the comprehensive experience is benchmarking the domestic head of Robotaxi, and in considerable aspects has achieved catch-up.
It is planned to carry out Robotaxi test operations on the Xiaopeng G9 in Q4 2022. From the current timeline of the enterprise, it will achieve full autonomous driving in 2026.
Bai Yiyang said that the current XPILOT3.5 optional rate is 20%, which should be lower than market expectations, but the market still has hope for the launch of urban NGP and XPILOT4.0, and the future increase in subscription rate will drive gross profit margin and profit improvement.
XPILOT4.0 is expected to be launched in 2023, and He Xiaopeng commented on it as "2 to 3 years ahead of most companies". The two new platform models, plus the P5 and G9, will be supported by at least four models.
Starting from the end of 2022, a number of models will be equipped with hardware that supportSPILOT4.0, and the software and services of XPILOT4.0 will be launched in the first half of 2023.