After the "punch" BBA, the unlimited scenery of Wei Xiaoli (Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal) is facing a new round of competition.
In 2021, the total revenue and delivery volume of Wei Xiaoli's three companies have doubled, and their gross profit margins have also ushered in substantial growth.
The recovery of the domestic market has given them hope, and in the competition with traditional import brands Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi, Wei Xiaoli has fully prevailed.
What is depressing is that Wei Xiaoli is still in the "quagmire" of continuous losses, and even the net losses of Xiaopeng and Ideal are still expanding.
The financial report shows that the three car companies continue the momentum of burning money, and have invested a lot of money in research and development and offline retail channel laying.
This is to expand the scale as soon as possible, further increase production and sales, so as to occupy a dominant position in the market and turn losses into profits as soon as possible.
Judging from the previous planning, they all hope to use the new products launched in 2022 to expand market share and increase profitability.
However, the challenge is that the epidemic, supply chain shortages and raw material price increases have directly affected their product cost inputs, production links, deliveries, etc.
In 2022, Wei Xiaoli is still waiting for a good opportunity in burning money.
The old year burned money more than once
According to the law of the automotive industry, an annual sales volume of a car company must exceed at least 100,000 vehicles to achieve economies of scale and then achieve profitability.
A typical representative is Tesla, which delivered 103,200 vehicles in 2017; delivered more than 200,000 vehicles in 2018 and achieved profitability for two consecutive quarters in 2018.
For Wei Xiaoli, the annual delivery is close to 100,000 vehicles, the gross profit margin has exceeded or approached 20%, even if it is not immediately profitable, but two of the three companies have also shown an expanding trend, which is puzzling.
In 2021, Xiaopeng's net loss reached 4.863 billion yuan, an increase of 30% year-on-year; WEILAI lost 4.016 billion yuan, narrowing by 24% year-on-year; the ideal loss was 322 million yuan, an increase of 112% year-on-year.
Judging from the financial report data, the reasons for the three companies all point to research and development expenses and sales/management expenses.
In 2021, wei xiaoli's research and development expenses have doubled.
Comparison of Wei Xiaoli's research and development
As technology-based companies, maintaining a long-term R&D ratio of more than 10% is their basic essential.
Wei Xiaoli is in the growth period of rapid development, and it is necessary to continue to use high R&D costs to launch new products/technologies to occupy the market.
By the end of 2021, the R&D personnel of Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal were 4809, 5217 and 3415 respectively, accounting for 31.6%, 37% and 38.7% respectively.
In 2021, the sales/management expenses of all three companies increased by more than 70%, of which the ideal was the most "fierce", and the amplitude directly doubled.
In the earnings call, ideally said, "In 2021, the company will significantly expand its direct operation and service network, and the number of retail centers at the end of the year will be almost 4 times that of the end of the previous year." ”
In terms of channel expansion, the three companies have completed the march to sink stores and supporting facilities in non-first-tier cities in 2021.
NIO sales, general and administrative expenses
The continuous high investment has led to an increase in the debt ratio of the three companies year by year.
In 2021, WEILAI's asset-liability ratio will exceed 50%, reaching 50.7%; Xiaopeng's value will be 35.7%, the lowest ideal, reaching 33.5%. In 2020, the asset-liability ratio of the three companies was 41.6%, 22.9% and 18% respectively.
Under the background of high investment and high debt operation, Xiaopeng Automobile's operating cash flow in 2021 was -2.56 billion yuan, an increase of dozens of times year-on-year; the ideal benefited from its consistent moderation and control, which was 8.34 billion yuan, doubling year-on-year, while Weilai did not disclose data.
Judging from the cash on the books, the three companies are still in a state of "no bad money" for the time being. Among them, NIO's cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term deposits, short-term investments and long-term deposits in 2021 are 55.4 billion yuan, and Xiaopeng is 43.54 billion yuan, ideally 50.16 billion yuan.
However, after removing the restricted cash, the cash and cash equivalents on the books of Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal were only 15.334 billion yuan, 11.025 billion yuan and 30.493 billion yuan, respectively.
For Wei Xiaoli, which has been in high investment and high debt for a long time, these cash can support its development in the short term; if it wants to maintain the same speed in the long run, it is necessary to take money from multiple channels to fill the "bottomless pit".
This is also one of the important reasons why Wei Xiaoli's three companies are seeking a dual listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2021. At present, all three have completed the dual listing of US stocks and Hong Kong stocks. Among them, Xiaopeng and Ideal have been included in the Hong Kong Stock Connect this year.
In the new year, there are wolves before there are tigers
Wei Xiaoli has always been interested in changing the loss situation.
If you want to turn around the loss, the most important thing is to expand the product matrix and obtain economies of scale as soon as possible, so as to increase market sales and proportion.
To this end, all three companies are under pressure in 2022 to launch a number of new products.
Among them, THE ET7, ET5 and ES7 developed by NIO2.0 technology platform will be delivered this year. Xiaopeng even set a target of selling 300,000 vehicles a year and exceeding 10,000 in July.
ET7
At the same time, NIO's new brand team for the mass market has been formed. According to the financial report meeting, Li Bin said that the research and development of the first batch of models has entered a critical stage.
In the third quarter of this year, Xiaopeng's new model G9 and the ideal new model L9 will also usher in the listing.
However, in order to successfully launch new cars in the context of rising raw material prices and international turbulence, and get sought after by consumers, Wei Xiaoli has faced more problems than they had previously expected.
In the past two years, the pace of electrification of mainstream car companies has accelerated, and the demand for power batteries has risen; in addition, the global trade environment driven by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has deteriorated, resulting in rising prices of key raw materials for power batteries.
At the recent electric 100 people meeting, Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that it is expected that after 2-3 years, lithium resources will restore the balance between supply and demand.
This means that this year, car companies will continue to be plagued by rising raw material prices, and the cost of their bicycles will increase accordingly.
Affected by the price increase of raw materials, a number of new energy vehicle companies announced model price increases this year, and Xiaopeng and Ideal are no exception. Weilai benefited from the scale advantage after the increase in sales, and did not announce a price increase.
But Li Bin also expressed his future plans, "This year, Weilai has a product improvement plan. At that time, a new price strategy will be formulated according to the market and raw material prices. ”
Although many institutions say that the most urgent time for core shortage has passed, there are still many companies facing the problem of lack of cores.
For example, the current LiDAR that Wei Xiaoli wants to carry is one of the components in short supply. This also causes new car launches/deliveries to be affected.
Earlier, when delivering THE WEIO ET7 and Xiaopeng P5, the three car companies were affected by the shortage of spare parts, resulting in a delay in the delivery period.
At the same time, Wei Xiaoli's delivery "results" in the first two months of 2022 are not ideal. In the first quarter of this year, Xiaopeng's cumulative sales reached just 25,000 vehicles, which is far from the target of 300,000 vehicles.
Whether it can launch and deliver new products as scheduled this year, and ensure that its own profitability is not affected, this is the primary problem facing Wei Xiaoli.
If they can't, they'll just go into a worse situation.
In addition to dealing with the troubles caused by external factors, this year's internal market competition cannot be ignored.
Most of the new energy brands of traditional domestic car companies will launch new models that compete with Wei Xiaoli this year, and many foreign companies (such as GM, Honda, etc.) will also launch models created by new platforms this year.
Driven by the policy of double carbon and double credit, plug-in hybrid models began to explode in 2021. Based on this, PHEV (Plug and Mix) models will be launched intensively from the end of 2021 to 2022. This means that the ideal range extender market will usher in more fierce competition this year.
In addition, Internet companies will also enter a new stage of car manufacturing, posing a certain "threat" to Wei Xiaoli.
It is reported that Xiaomi Car will launch engineering prototypes in the third quarter of this year, including two models of A+ class and B class cars. Previously, it was also reported that Didi would launch its first model in June this year.
Legacy problems, you have to carry
In addition to the continuous losses, in 2021, Wei Xiaoli also has some unfulfilled "wishes", such as Weilai's sales target of breaking 100,000, Xiaopeng's autopilot surpassing Tesla, etc.
This means that Wei Xiaoli must not only strive to overcome the production and delivery problems brought by the outside world, but also solve its own 2021 "legacy" problems.
As early as during the 2020 Guangzhou Auto Show, Xiaopeng announced that it would upgrade its autonomous driving software and hardware systems starting with the mass production models produced in 2021, and use lidar technology to improve performance.
However, this statement was "bombarded" by Tesla CEO Musk, who not only said that "they have Tesla's old version of the software, but not our latest neural network computer", but also said that Xiaopeng "stole" Apple's code.
Then He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, replied that "rumors cannot defeat any competitors", and said that "starting next year, you must have the mind to be prepared to be beaten by us to find the east, as for the international, we will meet." ”
Screenshot of He Xiaopeng's Weibo
In 2021, on the topic of defeating Tesla, Xiaopeng did not mention it again. Its benchmark Tesla FSD (autonomous driving) urban NGP (intelligent navigation assisted driving), is still in the testing stage.
It was not until the end of March this year that He Xiaopeng said, "Judging from the test results, Xiaopeng is very confident that the city-level NGP effect pushed out within this year will be quite better than the effect of Tesla FSD." ”
This sentence was only uttered from He Xiaopeng's mouth a year late.
It is reported that XPILOT 3.5 (Intelligent Driving System) plans to launch urban NGP in the first cities at the end of the second quarter of this year.
As the first model to carry XPILOT 3.5, the P5 has been affected by the shortage of chip supply, and the missing parts directly interfere with the function of XPILOT 3.5.
To this end, Xiaopeng released the "first delivery of the car and then the replacement of the radar" program at the end of October last year, which can be used to replace the radar after the car is lifted, and the reloading time is from March 31 this year.
This delayed the owner's use of the corresponding function by at least 5 months.
For Weilai, it not only failed to complete the sales target of 100,000 vehicles, but also lost the position of "top" in the sales volume of new car-making forces.
Under the influence of production line adjustment and shortage of battery and other components, Weilai's monthly delivery volume in the second half of the year has fluctuated many times and fallen out of the first echelon.
Since then, Weilai's sales performance has not stabilized rapidly, resulting in Weilai's goal of "selling 100,000 vehicles per year" in 2021.
Excluding appearance factors, some analysts believe that the reason for Weilai's weak sales is that it has not delivered new products in 2021.
Last year, Xiaopeng launched and delivered a new P5 model, the ideal launch delivery of the ideal ONE remodeled model, but Weilai did not deliver a new model.
In addition to the external environment, NIO will also be clamped down by the production capacity of its own factories.
At present, NIO's factory must not only ensure the co-production of the three existing models with et7, but also prepare for the subsequent launch of ES7; NIO expects that the production capacity of the plant's full production line will be increased to 60JPH (hourly workload) in the middle of the year.
Nio's second production base will not officially start production until the third quarter of this year, and the first production model is the new car ET5.
This means that ET7 will not reach conventional production capacity until Q3, and NIO's vehicle production capacity will fundamentally improve in Q4 this year.
Perhaps, weilai's distance from the goal is much farther.
The burning of money must continue, not only to endure the delivery problem caused by the shortage of raw materials, but also to face the close catch-up of traditional car companies.
There are wolves before there are tigers, and there are their own pains in the middle, wei Xiaoli's road in 2022 is indeed not easy to walk.