Under the "core panic, lithium vastness", only three of the 8 listed car companies in 2021 achieved double growth in revenue and profit

Financial Associated Press (Beijing, reporter Xu Hao) news, in 2021, the global auto market is generally facing a shortage of core resources for industrial development, high raw material prices and repeated epidemics, and the profitability of auto companies is also undergoing many tests.

According to the statistics of the Financial Associated Press reporter, as of March 31, among the 8 A\H-share listed vehicle companies that have released the 2021 financial report, Great Wall Motor, Dongfeng Motor Group and GUANGZHOU Automobile Group have achieved double growth in revenue and profit, WHILED and Geely Automobile have appeared in the situation of "increasing revenue without increasing profits", Jianghuai Automobile has benefited from government subsidies to achieve a sharp increase in profits, and only one beiqi Blue Valley has a loss, but it narrows compared with the previous year's loss.

Raw material prices have risen, and gross profit margins have come under pressure

Specifically, BYD has the highest revenue among the 8 listed car companies, but includes other businesses in addition to the whole vehicle. Among them, the revenue of BYD's automobile, automobile-related products and other products business was 112.489 billion yuan, an increase of 33.93% year-on-year. For the full year of 2021, BYD's new car sales reached 730,000 units, an increase of 75.4% year-on-year. At the same time, the net cash flow from operating activities reached 65.467 billion yuan, an increase of 44.22% year-on-year.

However, the "all the way" in the new energy market did not bring profit growth to BYD, but became the company with the largest profit decline among these 8 companies, while the gross profit margin of its automobile-related business fell by 7.81% to 17.39% year-on-year. BYD attributed the decline in profit to: "In 2021, the electronics business was under short-term pressure due to the impact of the global epidemic, and the company's overall costs increased due to factors such as rising raw material and commodity prices." ”

Among the new cars SOLD by BYD in 2021, new energy vehicles account for more than 80%. The "blade battery" with lithium iron phosphate as the positive pole is BYD's main power battery product, and the hype price surge encountered by lithium carbonate has become the object of general criticism in the industry in recent times. According to the latest quotation of the business agency, battery-grade lithium carbonate is still at a high price of 499,600 yuan / ton, and in early 2021, its unit price is less than 60,000 yuan, an increase of more than 700% so far.

Strengthening the control of raw materials has become one of the directions of BYD's recent investment. According to Tianyan, Sichuan Ludi Mining Company was recently established with a registered capital of 20 million yuan, and its business scope includes mining of mineral resources (non-coal mines); geological exploration of metal and non-metallic mineral resources; and research and development of emerging energy technologies. Shareholder information shows that the company is jointly held by Sichuan Luqiao and BYD.

Previously, on March 22, Shengxin Lithium Announced that it intends to introduce BYD as a strategic investor through a targeted issuance of shares. This is also an attempt by BYD to sell lithium battery upstream enterprises.

Rising raw material costs are a common problem in the industry, and Great Wall Motors, which has achieved double-digit increases in revenue and profit, has also seen a one-percentage point decline in gross profit margin, while reaching the lowest point in nearly 10 years. In terms of sales, according to the second phase of Great Wall Motor's equity incentive plan, from 2021 to 2023, the company's sales assessment targets are 1.49 million, 1.9 million and 2.8 million, and the net profit assessment targets are 6.8 billion yuan, 8.2 billion yuan and 11.5 billion yuan, respectively. At present, the actual completion rate of Great Wall Motors last year was 86.0% and 99.7%, respectively.

"The market competition of great wall brands such as WEY, Euler and Haval is intensifying, and other multiple factors are disturbed, and the actual growth rate of the Great Wall may still be less than expected." Some industry insiders said this.

It is worth mentioning that on the same day that Great Wall Motors released its financial report, Great Wall Motors announced that it would use no more than RMB12.4 billion of its own idle funds to purchase capital-protected risk controllable wealth management products of banks/securities companies. Great Wall Motors said that this move is "to improve the efficiency of the use of funds, increase the income of idle funds, and seek to maximize the interests of the group and shareholders." ”

The brand is upward and accelerates the transformation of electrification

Also appearing "increasing revenue without increasing profits" is Geely Automobile. In this regard, Geely Automobile explained, "Profit pressure comes from rising raw material costs, increased investment in research and development, and operating costs arising from the development of new businesses. ”

According to the financial report, the total investment in research and development of Geely Automobile in 2021 was 5.5 billion yuan, an increase of 16.1% year-on-year. "In 2021, Geely Automobile's R&D investment will increase, mainly for the research and development of extreme krypton vehicles, new energy and intelligence." Gui Shengyue, chief executive officer and executive director of Geely Automobile Holdings, said.

Geely Automobile has high hopes for Extreme Kr and does not hesitate to invest heavily. However, the extreme krypton car began to be delivered in October 2021, and only sold 6,009 units by the end of that year, failing to become a "blockbuster" as desired. In 2021, the total sales volume of Geely Automobile's new energy and electrified models was only 100,000 units, accounting for less than 10% of the overall sales.

"At present, There are problems such as slow product delivery and software need to be upgraded. This year, improvements will be made from the user side, product segment and R&D side. An Conghui, CEO of Extreme Kr Intelligent Technology, said while acknowledging the problem, "Extreme Kr's sales target this year is 70,000 vehicles, and 6 new models will be launched in the next three years." ”

In the entire territory of Geely Automobile, according to Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue revealed, "Geely Automobile 4.0 era of product layout will gradually enter the harvest period, the company has been building in the past few years CMA, SPA and SEA vast architecture will be fully reflected in recent years, Geely Automobile in recent years around the intelligent, electrification of a series of technology ecosystem layout, will eventually feed back to the consumer market." ”

GAC Group and Dongfeng Group, which are also accelerating the transition to electrification, are also trying to get rid of the shackles of joint venture brands on profits, and gain a broader market and stronger premium capabilities by creating more competitive new energy products. Even Beiqi Blue Valley, which is still in a loss, has narrowed its losses by relying on the sales growth of Jihu.

According to GAC, AEON plans to complete the introduction of A-round strategic investors in the third quarter of this year, and plans to choose to list on A-shares or H-shares next year.

Car companies that have benefited from the transformation of automobile electrification are not only the above-mentioned ones, but also Jianghuai Automobile, which exists in a special way. In 2021, in the case of declining revenue, Jianghuai Automobile achieved a sharp increase in profits, and it is also the largest profit increase among the above 8 car companies. From the financial report, jianghuai automobile's net profit attributable to the mother was 200 million yuan, while the net profit attributable to the mother after deducting non-deduction was a loss of 1.88 billion yuan, and in 2021, the government subsidy included in the profit and loss of the current period reached 2 billion yuan, and the subsidy for new energy vehicles reached 300 million yuan.

In addition, as a "foundry", Jianghuai Automobile also specifically mentioned in the financial report that the company received a capital increase of nearly 2 billion yuan from the controlling shareholder Jiangqi Holdings, further promoting the deepening cooperation between the company and Volkswagen; the cooperation with Weilai was fruitful, delivering about 93,000 vehicles throughout the year, and the two sides established Jianglai Company in March to further deepen cooperation.

According to data from the China Automobile Association, the operating income of China's automobile manufacturing industry in 2021 was 8,670.62 billion yuan, an increase of 6.7% year-on-year, and the total profit was 530.57 billion yuan, only achieving a slight increase of 1.9% year-on-year. There were 3581 loss-making enterprises in the automobile manufacturing industry, an increase of 336 over the previous year, with a loss of 21.8%, an increase of 0.01 percentage points over the previous year.