22/03/29
Lead
Don't ask whether Huawei can be saved, in case it is not saved?
Author 丨 Du Xiaogan
Responsible editor 丨 Xu Jinkai
Edit 丨 Chic
The end of March is the day when listed car companies release their annual reports, several joys and some sorrows, some revenue of 100 billion, profits of 10 billion, the days are full of wind. However, there are also many car companies that have fallen into successive losses, including Beiqi Blue Valley.
The data shows that in 2021, Beiqi Blue Valley achieved operating income of 8.697 billion yuan, an increase of 65% year-on-year, and the net profit attributable to the mother continued to lose, reaching 5.244 billion yuan, compared with the loss of 6.482 billion yuan in the previous year, it has slowed down, but in two consecutive years of bad situation, Beiqi Blue Valley has made the loss reach 11.7 billion yuan, far exceeding half the market value of Beiqi Blue Valley listed companies.
As the "first stock of New Energy Vehicles in China", BAIC Blue Valley has indeed been beautiful for a period of time, including BAIC BJEV, which was also the leader of the new energy market before, and baicc new energy, which has ranked first in China's pure electric vehicle sales for seven consecutive years, and is also the leader in the new new energy sales list.
Especially between 2018 and 2019, in the year of life and death such as the huge loss of new car-making forces and the crisis of trust, Beiqi Blue Valley still maintained a certain profitability. At that time, the advantages of the Polar Fox, the left hand Magna, and the right hand Huawei were also once optimistic about the market and investors.
But the market competition is always in change, since 2020, Baiqi Blue Valley has fallen into a crisis, on the one hand, the sales volume of BAIC New Energy with economic positioning has fallen out of the new energy list, and at the same time, the polar fox that takes the high-end route has started slowly, and sales have never come up, making Beiqi Blue Valley have been in the midst of ups and downs.
According to the data of the Association, the total sales volume of Baiqi Blue Valley in 2021 is only 26,000 vehicles, of which the economical BAIC BJEV EC, EU and EX series sales are 20,000 vehicles, and the sales volume of the Jihu brand is 6,000 vehicles. Obviously, whether it is a two-end market or a popular market, Beiqi Blue Valley is lagging behind.
If BAIC BJEV has difficulties in the expansion of the mass market because of its product strength advantages and the existing B-end thinking in the past, then the high-end road of the Jihu brand should have a better breakthrough, after all, today's high-end market demand is very strong. The reality is that in the first two months of this year, the polar fox accumulated 1377 vehicles, and it cannot prove itself in the era of intelligent electrification in full swing.
Where is the root of the problem?
1
Is "Magna + Huawei" an advantage?
"Magna + Huawei" was once considered the core competitive advantage of Polar Fox.
The reason and logic is simple, Magna is the top in the automotive manufacturing industry, has more than a hundred years of high-end car manufacturing experience and history, the production of cars are many Mercedes-Benz G-Class, Aston Martin Rapide and other top luxury cars.
At least from the manufacturing level, McGra's products do have better quality, according to Jihu Automobile: "A number of advanced car manufacturing processes have brought industry-leading quality to Jihu." The torsional stiffness of the Alfa S and Alpha T vehicles is even higher than that of the Rolls-Royce Phantom. ”
However, in the new automobile era, consumers of electric vehicles may not care about the quality of the car, otherwise why Tesla has a rough manufacturing process, it still has a large number of fans; Xiaopeng Motors has also said before that consumers now have a greater impact on car quality and car experience, and the experience has a greater impact on car purchase decisions, which means that many consumers have more tolerance and tolerance for manufacturing than intelligent experience.
What is more worth mentioning is that at present, the manufacturing level and manufacturing process of Chinese automobiles have made rapid progress, and the best production lines and most advanced equipment are basically in Chinese factories. And even if it is a newly established automobile brand, as long as it has a more intelligent design and a complete quality control system, there is basically no product quality problem, because the newer the brand, the newer the factory, standing on the shoulders of giants. Look at "Wei Xiaoli", the same new brand and new product, can you say that its quality is not good?
So on this level, does this mean that Magna's advantage is no longer there? Or is that not its advantage anymore?
Huawei is another core advantage of Jihu, whether it is technology or brand awareness, Huawei is the top stream of the industry and cross-border. However, from the perspective of the past year, Huawei's empowerment of Polar Fox only exists in the product of Alpha S HI. What is even more unfortunate is that from the pre-sale price of Huawei's HI version announced in April 2021 to the expected delivery at the end of 2021, but as of now, the HI version of Alpha S is still in difficult production, and the time has passed a year, and the delivery is far away.
In contrast, Huawei's partnership with another partner, Xiaokang, has been hot, from Xilis SF5 to the new car brand AITO, to the first time the Hongmeng system has launched the Q&Q M5, Huawei seems to have bet on Xiaokang and Q&Q. The polar fox that was "snubbed" by Huawei rarely borrowed Huawei's aura.
Although it is Huawei inside on the Alpha S HI version and has three lidars at the same time, the repeated delays in delivery time and the fact that Yu Chengdong, head of Huawei's car BU, rarely stands for The Pole Fox, may lay a shadow for the future deep cooperation between the Pole Fox and Huawei.
Interestingly, at the beginning of this year, an internal speech by Yu Chengdong was considered by the industry to refer to the zhiji fox: "The enterprises that choose our car BU, including state-owned enterprises and central enterprises, have no brand, no channel, no product design, and no experience!" Monthly sales are only single digits..."
In fact, when Jihu just shouted out the advantage of "left hand Magna, right hand Huawei", the outside world has always been suspicious of this, betting the "soul" in the hands of others, which is not the longest and sustainable development path for a company. At least so far, the Polar Fox has not really played this advantage.
Forget Magna and Huawei, what the Fox needs is to be themselves.
2
From 6000 to 40,000
In fact, the target of the 2021 Pole Fox is 10,000 vehicles, of course, there are 12,000 vehicles, but in the end, the delivery figure of the polar fox car for the whole year stayed at 4993, less than half of the target at the beginning of the year. Compared with the blowout of China's new energy vehicle market in 2021, the performance of The Pole Fox is really crotch.
It is not that Jihu does not work hard, we can also see from the annual report that in order to achieve the transformation of products to high-end, Beiqi Blue Valley has comprehensively promoted the promotion and channel construction of the ARCFOX Jihu brand, the company has increased brand communication, advertising and operation and other sales expenses have increased, and the impact on the company's performance in 2021 is about 1.7 billion yuan.
There is no doubt that the construction of high-end brands is very money-burning, as for the effect...
Entering a new year, Polar Fox has set a higher target of 40,000 vehicles, an increase of 701% year-on-year. This means that after deducting only the sales of more than a thousand vehicles in the first two months, in the next 10 months, The Extreme Fox will complete the sales of 4,000 vehicles per month. However, from the current momentum of Jihu, this goal is indeed very difficult, but it is also excluded that like other car companies, a higher goal is to seize more supply chain resources such as chips and batteries.
According to the annual report data, at the end of 2021, the brand channels of Jihu were 86, and the current construction of distribution channels has exceeded 110. This year, the biggest expectation of the outside world for Jihu is to enter Huawei's sales system. Up to now, The Official of Jihu has not released a timetable for entering Huawei's sales system, and insiders have also said that they are still talking with Huawei, and it is expected that Alpha S will also enter the Huawei sales system, including HI versions.
It can be seen that the binding between The Pole Fox and Huawei is considered by the outside world to be quite urgent, and the outside world also believes that Huawei can save the Pole Fox. But in fact, this is not the case, from the frequency of interaction between Huawei and Polar Fox in the past year, we can also see some signs of cooling in the cooperation between Huawei and Polar Fox.
There are also many analysts who believe that Jihu and BAIC BJEV state-owned enterprises, which have their own arrogant components, in some key decisions and core interests, Jihu and BAIC BJEV will not make concessions, for both sides of the cooperation, in fact, they are holding a strong attitude, this integration will naturally not be too smooth. What's more, over the years, Jihu and BAIC BJEV have changed hands in practice for many times, and there are indeed some deviations in the concept of promoting and implementing the previous strategy.
Coupled with the fact that this year's market is not impressive, whether it is the price increase of raw materials such as chips and batteries, or the many uncertainties brought by the epidemic to the upstream and downstream industrial chain and consumption of automobiles, it is more difficult for companies like Jihu to be in the process of loss. According to the annual report, it is not difficult to find that the capacity utilization rate of Beiqi Blue Valley and Jihu is extremely low, and the design capacity of the Magna plant is 150,000 vehicles, and only more than 6,000 vehicles were produced last year, and the operation and operation pressure is relatively large.
In addition, in terms of business philosophy, in fact, there are also some drawbacks in Jihu, such as its too much reliance on the Beijing market, to know that the beijing market has a limited annual sales base of new energy, and the competition is not easy. Before communicating with Jihu insiders, it said that this year Jihu will also increase the investment in the official car and large customer market, obviously when the intelligent electric vehicle enters a more competitive era, the official car and large customers are only a supplement, the wider ocean should be in the C-end market, after all, for the price of the polar fox at a price of 20-30 million, the contribution of travel, large customers and the official field to sales is still limited.
It is worth mentioning that in the "Proposal on the 2022 Annual Business Plan" in the Announcement of Extreme Fox, Leng Yan, a director who is also the executive vice president of Daimler Greater China Investment Co., Ltd., abstained from voting, saying that the proposal did not meet the requirements for his decision-making. In fact, Leng Yan had abstained from voting on Beiqi Blue Valley's "Proposal on the 2021 Annual Business Plan" for the same reason, and really wanted to know what his inner OS was.
Since the release of the Extreme Fox brand at the Geneva Motor Show in 2019, it has been 3 years since the image of the Extreme Fox high-end brand has suffered in the face of sluggish sales. With the frequent efforts of independent car companies in high-end brands, Extreme Krypton, Lantu, Zhiji, Avita, etc., have opened a new round of offensive momentum. So how many opportunities are left for the Polar Fox?