Wen 丨 Sun Guangxin
Editor| Liu Yuqi
What has changed after the whole year of competition in 2021?
Xiaopeng, Weilai, and Ideal have released their financial reports one after another, and the answers have gradually surfaced.
In 2021, after the mass production of "Li Xiaowei", the first annual delivery volume is close to the 100,000 mark, which is a new turning point for the entire new domestic car-making forces.
In the past year, the new energy vehicle market has almost spent ups and downs.
Rising prices and declining sales have almost become the main theme of the beginning of 2022. With the announcement of price increases by industry giant Tesla, domestic brands have followed suit. On the one hand, due to the increase in the price of raw materials, especially the "three electricity", the average price of ideal and Xiaopeng increased by about 10,000 yuan; on the other hand, after the subsidy for new energy vehicles declined, the sales volume in the fourth quarter fell sharply.
Along with price increases and declining sales volumes, there are challenges on the supply chain side. In February, Suzhou suffered an epidemic, the supply of parts for car companies such as Ideal was affected, and the large-scale epidemic in Shanghai in March also made the offline sales of the three companies strongly blocked.
In such a market background, the financial reports issued by the three companies at this time are more worthy of attention. Through data combing, Optical Cone Intelligence found that whether it is the domestic competition pattern or the international trend, some key changes are revealed in the financial report:
Delivery level: "Li Xiaowei" seat adjustment, Xiaopeng rose to the top of the list, Weilai weak in the second half of the year, leading the ideal with a millimeter trend; although the delivery volume has a substantial growth rate compared with last year, but compared with the 500,000 annual deliveries when Tesla first achieved profitability in 2020, it is still far from the same, and the industry is still in its infancy; performance level: The three revenues are between 100% and 300% growth rate, still growing rapidly. In addition, in terms of gross profit margin, price increases are an important means to improve gross profit margins, but the continuous loss situation has not changed. Where is the inflection point for turning a profit? Ideal Auto has already seen a single-quarter profit situation, and Weilai also mentioned that it expects to achieve profitability in 2024. Trend level: In the context of double pressure on cost and policy, the three are increasing investment in research and development, including automatic driving systems, chips, "three electricity" and the recruitment of talents, while all three are ready to launch new models in 2022, in new market segments, with new car belt sales.
In contrast, the performance of the three car companies in all aspects has its own good and bad, but it is certain that the competition in 2022 will be stronger, and the confrontation points of the three companies will be more and more.
The new ranking in the rush
Global supply chain issues are a challenge for car companies, in such an environment, delivery ability has increasingly become the key to the competition of new energy tracks, and the reordering of deliveries is also the most concerned change in the three financial reports.
In 2021, NIO delivered 91,429 units, an increase of 109.1% year-on-year; ideal cars delivered 90,491 units, an increase of 177.4% year-on-year; Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 98,155 units, an increase of 263% year-on-year.
It can be seen that Xiaopeng's growth is strong, and it is mainly concentrated in the exponential growth of the third and fourth quarters, while the ideal growth rate remains stable in the three countries due to "one punch to the world". Compared with ideal cars and Xiaopeng Motors, Weilai's delivery growth rate in the second half of the year was weak and the peak breakthrough force was poor, and no quarterly delivery volume exceeded 30,000 in the whole year, resulting in the loss of the first throne.
In the stage of rapid development of new energy vehicles, no progress means regression.
According to the financial report, in 2021, the total revenue of WEIO was 36.136 billion yuan, an increase of 122.3% year-on-year; the total revenue of ideal automobile was 27.010 billion yuan, an increase of 185.6% year-on-year; and the total revenue of Xiaopeng Automobile was 20.988 billion yuan, an increase of 259.1% year-on-year. Xiaopeng Automobile has the largest revenue growth due to the increase in sales. Although at present, from the perspective of sales, WEILAI still maintains a large leading edge, but the growth rate of ideal and Xiaopeng is very rapid.
Relative to sales, the gross profit margin of new power car companies is more worthy of consideration. It is worth noting that although Xiaopeng sells the most, it earns the least and loses the most. Xiaopeng has the lowest gross profit margin and profit margin of the three.
According to the data, in 2021, the gross profit margin of WEILAI was 18.9% and the gross profit margin of automobiles was 20.1%; the gross profit margin of ideal automobiles was 21.3%, and the gross profit margin of automobiles was 20.6%; the gross profit margin of Xiaopeng Automobile was 12.0%, and the profit margin of automobiles was 10.9%. Of course, there is also a reason for the low gross profit margin of Xiaopeng Automobile, the unit price of several models of Xiaopeng is in the range of 200,000 yuan, compared with the unit price of Weilai and the ideal core model of more than 300,000 yuan.
On the other hand, although Li Xiaowei's net loss has expanded in 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's net loss in the context of a record high delivery volume is also the highest, with a net loss of 4.863 billion yuan, an increase of 78.0% year-on-year. The net loss of the bicycle was about 50,000 yuan.
Although the growth rate of Weilai is weak, at the level of loss, the three companies have taken the lead in beginning to shrink losses. According to NIO's financial report, the net loss in 2021 was 4.016 billion yuan, down 24.3% from the previous year. Ideal Auto had a net loss of 321 million yuan, the lowest amount of loss, but an increase of 112% year-on-year.
From the perspective of financial report data, while revenue and gross profit have increased, the net losses of the three new forces have expanded, which is the growth of research and development expenses and sales, general and administrative expenses.
1. R & D expenses: Xiaopeng ranks first, Weilai ranks second, and the ideal is the most calculated. In 2021, the R&D expenses of NIO, Ideal Automobile and Xiaopeng Automobile were 4.592 billion yuan, 3.286 billion yuan and 4.114 billion yuan respectively, an increase of 84.6%, 198.7% and 138.4% respectively year-on-year; in terms of R&D expense ratio, Xiaopeng still ranked first, with a R&D investment ratio of 19.6% far higher than that of Ideal 12.18% and WEILAI 7.3%.
Through the combing of the financial report, the optical cone intelligent discovery, R & D investment is divided into two parts: one is the automatic driving system, including the road recognition system, the self-research of the visual recognition system, the self-research of the chip, the self-research of the battery, which greatly increases the research and development cost; the second is that the research and development of the new model of the vehicle also occupies a certain proportion.
2. Sales, general and administrative expenses: In 2021, all three have successively increased sales, general and administrative expenses. WEILAI's 6.878 billion yuan was high, ideal, Xiaopeng 3.492 billion yuan, 5.305 billion yuan, an increase of 74.9%, 212.1% and 81.7% respectively.
Based on the overall situation in 2021, Weilai and Xiaopeng Automobile also made sales forecasts for the first quarter of 2022. NIO expects vehicle deliveries in the first quarter to be 25,000-26,000 units, up 24.6% year-on-year to 29.6%, revenue of 9.631 billion to 9.987 billion yuan, up 20.6% to 25.1% year-on-year; Xiaopeng Automobile expects vehicle deliveries in the first quarter to be 33,500 to 34,000 units, up 151.1% to 154.9% year-on-year, revenue of 7.2 billion to 7.3 billion yuan, an increase of 144.0% to 14.7.4% year-on-year; Ideal Automobile due to the early release of earnings, No clear performance outlook was given.
Although from the perspective of net profit margin, the profitability of Weilai, Ideal Automobile and Xiaopeng Automobile has improved, And Ideal Automobile has been profitable in a single quarter, and Weilai also mentioned that it is expected to achieve profitability in 2024.
In 2021, the long and short boards of the three companies have gradually emerged: Weilai's profits are high but the growth is in decline, Xiaopeng products are more than sold but the profits are low, and the ideal financial performance is stable but lacks new growth points.
Delivery challenges and autonomous driving opportunities
From a longer time line, Li Xiaowei is currently in the stage of capacity climbing. Whether it can reduce the manufacturing cost of bicycles through mass production and expansion of sales is the key point for the next turnaround.
And that faces no small challenge.
The graph originates from the network
The first is the difficulty of delivery, and the delivery cycle is constantly lengthened. Although Xiaopeng's delivery volume has soared, it is still complained by many car owners because of the delay in delivery. The delivery problem is actually the supply chain problem.
At present, Li Xiaowei's delivery capacity is limited due to the supply of parts.
Qin Lihong, co-founder of Weilai, once told the media, "I said that the delivery target this year is not counted, the supply chain is decided, and how much production is paid." He Xiaopeng also said that a typical example of delivery problems in 2021 is that many of the consumer orders are models that use lithium iron phosphate batteries, but due to the limited production capacity provided by suppliers, lithium iron phosphate accounts for a small proportion; Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Ideal Auto, also said on a conference call to find more suitable suppliers to improve production flexibility.
The second is the R&D dilemma. Taking chips as an example, at present, domestic high-computing power intelligent car chips have been in a state of shortage. The ideal uses the Horizon Journey Five chip, and Xiaopeng is developing its own chip, which is far from the performance of Tesla's self-developed chip. The second is the basic software and operating system, the mainland upper layer software and service applications have been facing the "card neck" situation, only the middle layer is completely autonomous and controllable, in order to ensure that the upper layer algorithm is safe and reliable.
But under multiple challenges, there are also unlimited opportunities.
In the world, thanks to the heat of the new energy market in China and the world, Li Xiaowei's development speed is much faster than Tesla's. From the appearance of Tesla's first mass production car in 2008, Tesla took 10 years to achieve an annual delivery of 100,000, when Tesla's net profit margin was -19.05%, far lower than the current net interest rate of Weilai and Ideal.
At the moment when the demand for new energy vehicles is increasing sharply, production is an important factor restricting the growth of car companies' delivery volume, and one of the reasons why Tesla can achieve the profitability of the car-making business in 2021 and the net profit increased by more than 5 times year-on-year is precisely due to the large amount of production capacity and cost and supply chain advantages provided by tesla by the Shanghai Super Factory put into operation in the fourth quarter of 2020.
This is evident from the data. Tesla's Shanghai factory will produce more than 480,000 vehicles in 2021, while its global production capacity increase in 2021 will be 436,700 units, and from these two data alone, the growth of delivery volume basically depends on the Shanghai gigafactory that has recently been put into operation.
Although Li Xiaowei is also facing production capacity pressure at present, due to the favorable policy environment and land, manpower and other policy support in the mainland, the three are actively building factories to expand production capacity.
In terms of WEI, the upgrading of the production line of the Jianghuai Weilai plant is expected to be completed in the first half of this year, and the Hefei Xinqiao Intelligent Automobile Industrial Park is expected to be put into operation in the third quarter of this year; in addition to the establishment of a second plant in Beijing, ideal automobile is also considering building a third plant in Chongqing, ideal automobile also said that in 2023, it will use a two-shift working mechanism to expand production capacity to 750,000 vehicles; Xiaopeng Automobile's Wuhan plant and the second phase of the Zhaoqing plant signed in 2021 are also expected to be put into operation in 2023.
Another positive reason is that domestic new energy vehicles are almost standing on the shoulders of Tesla and have gone through the most basic stage. As the competition for new energy vehicles enters the stage of intelligent level competition, new competitive focus such as automatic driving may be more conducive to Li Xiaowei narrowing the gap with Tesla.
In the conference call, Xiaopeng Motors highlighted its intelligent driving system, XPILOT. He Xiaopeng said that the research and development of XPILOT 3.5 city NGP with Xiaopeng P5 as the main user is progressing smoothly, and the test version is rapidly iterating. According to the plan, the technology development of the urban NGP will be completed in the second quarter of this year. He Xiaopeng also said that the effect of the city and NGP pushed out within this year will be better than the Effect of Tesla FSD.
The latest progress of Ideal Auto is the launch of NOA and visual fusion AEB functions on the 2021 Ideal ONE in December 2021, and at the just-concluded 8th China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, Li Xiang also said that AEB should be made standard.
The ideal AD Max, a fully developed intelligent driving system
Earlier this year, Tesla said on a post-earnings conference call that it would achieve L4-level autonomous driving by 2022. In this regard, Ideal Car said that from 2022 onwards, the new models launched will be equipped with hardware compatible with L4 level autonomous driving as standard, and its upcoming Release of Ideal L9 will achieve full-scenario navigation assistance functions. He Xiaopeng recently said that Xiaopeng Automobile will complete the transition to unmanned driving in 2026.
The new forces do not talk about profits, but aim to break through
Summarizing the past is the best way to set the tone for the future. Whether from a domestic or international perspective, 2022 is a crucial year for Li Xiaowei, or it will usher in a new round of outbreaks.
As mentioned earlier, the development of new car companies is still in its early stages, which is far from the profit target. From the perspective of Tesla's development path, it will be found that when a large-scale mass production is achieved and the cost of the whole vehicle is reduced, it can finally achieve a turnaround.
Referring to Tesla's history, Li Xiaowei disclosed that the next focus of work is mainly in these aspects: reducing costs and improving gross profit margins, obtaining more users with new models, expanding sales channels to increase sales, and increasing R& D investment to narrow the product gap or even surpass.
Look at them one by one.
First of all, the improvement of gross profit margin can allow Li Xiaowei to improve the loss situation and have more money for marketing and research and development.
For the gross profit margin target of 2022, Weilai gives a more cautious and conservative 18%-20%, compared with Tesla's gross profit margin of 30% in the past two years, breakeven is still obstructed and difficult.
The 3 new cars launched by NIO this year are based on its second-generation technology platform NT2, NIO has previously said that after the annual sales of 300,000 vehicles, the gross profit margin of NT2 platform models will reach 25%, first increase the gross profit margin of some models, "first get rich and then get rich", which is the strategy of domestic car companies at present.
However, gross profit growth requires not only an increase in product gross margins, but also an increase in sales volume to increase revenue scale, which depends on new models to improve product layout and strengthen sales channel construction.
In 2022, Li Xiaowei began to accelerate the launch of new products. In addition to the three new cars already mentioned earlier, Li Bin also said on Weilai's conference call that the new brand for the mass market is progressing smoothly, the core team has been built, the strategic direction and development strategy have been clarified, and the first batch of products has also entered the key research and development stage, but did not disclose whether it is a sub-brand Gemini that has been exposed within 300,000 yuan.
Xiaopeng Automobile's G9 will also be officially launched this year, and it also plans to launch a new C-class car platform, a B-class car platform, and the corresponding first car in 2023.
Ideal Cars will also bid farewell to the stage of relying on one car to win the world, in addition to the flagship SUV model that will be released in the second quarter, Ideal Cars also plans to launch a pure electric vehicle model that supports ultra-fast charging next year.
In addition to the push for new cars, the expansion of sales channels is also the next focus. As of the end of January 2022, Ideal Auto has 206 retail centers in 102 cities, and operates 278 after-sales maintenance centers and Ideal Auto Authorized Sheet Metal Spray Centers in 204 cities, and ideal Cars plans to open 400 retail centers by the end of 2022.
Due to the direct operation model, In the future, Li Xiaowei is expected to earn the money of this after-sales service earned by the current 4S store.
The ultimate purpose of the above actions is to increase sales and then increase revenue, to share the gradually rising costs and expenses, to reduce the cost of sharing through large-scale mass production, and ultimately to achieve profitability. But in addition, there is another meaning for Li Xiaowei to run wildly.
The first echelon of car manufacturing is not only competing with itself, but also competing with the overall supply chain level of China's intelligent vehicles. When smart cars become indispensable intelligent terminals in the next era, the terminal prospers and the industry prospers, and the industry prospers and feeds the terminal to win.