In the era of non-smart phones, just grab a person on the street and ask him what browser he is using, 80% will answer UC. As the founder of UC Browser, He Xiaopeng chose to leave after being pocketed by Alibaba for 3 years, and at the same time opened "Xiaopeng Motors", hoping to use his own name to always remind him of his responsibilities.
In 2020, as soon as Xiaopeng Automobile was listed, the market value exceeded 10 billion, in the new energy car manufacturing market that was in dispute, Xiaopeng finally stood out with the ideal and Weilai, and was called "the three musketeers of the new car-making forces", which also fully proved the success of He Xiaopeng, Xiaopeng Automobile has now become the leader in the new forces of car-making.
In the entire 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile sold a total of 98,155 vehicles, although this is not an order of magnitude for Tesla, a new energy brand with nearly one million units a year, but in the face of the annual sales of 91,000 and 90,000 in the ideal and Weilai, Xiaopeng has been firmly in the position of the boss of the new car-making force. But this "big guy" doesn't seem to have a good life as his two little brothers.
Losses widened The earnings report was ugly
After Xiaopeng officially announced its 2021 financial report some time ago, the new car-making force "Wei Xiaoli" has handed over the 2021 report card. On the whole, Xiaopeng has undisputedly become the champion of the delivery of new car-making forces in 2021, but it has also become the enterprise with the least revenue and almost zero profit growth among the three.
Throughout 2021, Xiaopeng's car sales revenue was 20.04 billion yuan, but the most profitable Weilai reached 33.1697 billion yuan, and the slightly worse ideal also completed the achievement of 26.13 billion yuan, and in the last two months of last year, Xiaopeng's sales exceeded 15,000 yuan in a row, ushering in a wave of outbreaks, Q4's car sales revenue was only about 8.1 billion, still less than Weilai and ideal's 9.2 billion and 10.3 billion, which is still in the case of Xiaopeng's sales leading sharply.
Of course, this is mainly because the average price of Xiaopeng bicycles is only 250,000 yuan, while the average price of ideal cars exceeds 340,000 yuan, and Weilai has reached 440,000 yuan. The low price of bicycles determines that it is difficult for Xiaopeng to compete with the latter two in terms of revenue scale, and in the case of sales failure to rise sharply, it has been at a low level among the top three new forces.
Although Xiaopeng's earning power is not strong, it is absolutely first-class in spending money. According to Xiaopeng's financial report, Xiaopeng's net loss in 2021 reached 4.863 billion yuan, equivalent to selling a car to lose nearly 50,000 yuan, while last year's ideal car only lost 321.5 million yuan, Weilai although it also lost nearly 4 billion yuan, but it was not as good as Xiaopeng, and Weilai narrowed 24.3% compared with the previous year's loss, and Compared with Xiaopeng, weilai has entered the right track in terms of revenue.
Where did Xiaopeng spend his money? In the whole year of 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile invested 4.114 billion yuan in research and development, and the proportion of research and development in total revenue was as high as 19.6%, 12.7% of Weilai, and 12% of the ideal. Throwing money on research and development is certainly the right way, but for the entire automotive industry, Xiaopeng has not yet become a climate, at this stage Xiaopeng is still in the "small profits, high sales" and "just sprouting", doing the right thing at the wrong time will not necessarily bring good results, Xiaopeng also clearly knows that the current problem needs to be solved urgently.
Short-term gross profit margin is difficult to improve
After the release of the 2021 annual report, Xiaopeng executives, especially He Xiaopeng, found that the problems in the financial report need to be solved urgently, in the conference call for the annual report, He Xiaopeng said that "through a series of advanced manufacturing technologies to achieve better cost control, new models will enter a higher price range, improve the overall gross profit margin, the medium and long-term goal is to increase the company's overall gross profit margin to more than 25%", He Xiaopeng felt that solving the problem of earnings only needs to solve the problem of low gross profit margin.
The gross profit margin of Xiaopeng Automobile is indeed not high, first of all, the price of Xiaopeng Automobile is the most close to the people in Yusan Middle School, the cheapest is about 170,000, and the most expensive Xiaopeng P7 does not exceed 450,000. In terms of gross profit margin, since 2018, Xiaopeng Automobile's data is -24.33%, -24.05%, 4.55%, 12.50%, which has always been ranked last in "Wei Xiaoli", and the gap with Weilai and ideal has become wider and wider.
If you want to improve the gross profit margin, Xiaopeng has two ways to go. One is to increase the price of bicycles by providing more added value for cars; the other is that Xiaopeng Motors launches more high-end models, which increases overall profits and improves gross profit margins through these cars.
First of all, Xiaopeng's current capital structure has no ability to adjust a large amount of money like Weilai to engage in power exchange and service, which is not the main direction of Xiaopeng' attack, so does Xiaopeng dare to directly increase the price?
At the beginning of this year, with the subsidy decline and raw materials soaring, including Xiaopeng new energy brands have increased prices, but compared to the waves after weilai and the ideal price increase, xiaopeng price increase has attracted more attention, especially Xiaopeng P5 was originally positioned 160,000-200,000 yuan, and now the price rises to 18-22 million yuan, some relevant media people pointed out that Xiaopeng Automobile has been taking the price-friendly route, and its users are more sensitive to price, and this wave of price increases will undoubtedly have a certain degree of impact on its sales in the next second quarter.
For the affordable Xiaopeng Automobile, the risks brought about by the price increase of the old models they cannot afford to gamble, and He Xiaopeng's strategy is more biased towards the release of new models. He Xiaopeng said on the earnings call, "The new car G9 is expected to become another major killer of Xiaopeng in the smart pure electric medium and large SUV market." In addition, the Xiaopeng G9 enters a higher price range, which will further improve the overall gross profit margin level of Xiaopeng."
However, Xiaopeng's desire to increase the gross profit margin through new models is almost impossible to achieve in the short term. Putting aside those high-end models that still exist on the PPT, xiaopeng G9 to be delivered this year is currently only the stage of PT production prototypes just off the production line from the factory, even if Xiaopeng concentrates on overcoming the now extremely severe raw material and production capacity problems and successful mass production, Xiaopeng G9 began to warm up at least the third quarter of this year, and the official listing is likely to be at the end of this year or even next year.
Regardless of whether the market's enthusiasm for the Xiaopeng G9 can reach the level of WEI ES6 or the ideal ONE, Xiaopeng wants to rely on the G9 to narrow its net loss by waiting for the market's recognition of the car to turn into an increase in sales, a process that will take at least a year. Xiaopeng is almost impossible to solve the revenue problem in the short term, and now Xiaopeng can only hope that the existing product reputation can get better and better, and truly achieve the "more" sales of the entire automotive industry, rather than competing with new brands such as Weilai and Ideal in marketing.
The disaster is not a one-way Problem of Xiaopeng products
On the night that Xiaopeng announced the financial report, Mr. He of Longhua District, Shenzhen City, parked in the community of Xiaopeng car suddenly caught fire, and from the picture can be clearly seen that the body including the chassis are burning fire, according to the witness description of the scene, in the process of vehicle combustion, there are constant explosions, very dangerous.
Xiaopeng also took the initiative to admit that the starting train type was the 2019 Xiaopeng G3, saying that it would cooperate with the relevant departments to investigate the cause of the fire, but until now it seems that it has not been able to come up with an accurate result.
And this is not the first time that the Xiaopeng G3 model caught fire, as early as the middle of last year, there was a Xiaopeng G3 spontaneous combustion incident in Guangzhou Metropolis, and the car occurred when the charging pile was charged, the situation was very dangerous; in August 2020, a Xiaopeng G3 in Guangzhou had a smoke and fire, and Xiaopeng's official response found that there were obvious serious bumps at the bottom of the battery box, resulting in serious damage to the battery, and the preliminary judgment was the cause of the accident; in 2019, an inexplicable fire occurred in the rear of a Xiaopeng G3 car in Guangzhou.
The safety of trams is often more of a concern than the oil car, Xiaopeng Automobile Light G3 a car has a fire accident every year, and most of the burning places are near the battery pack, which has a considerable blow to the reputation of Xiaopeng products, in fact, not only the safety of Xiaopeng products themselves, its proud automatic driving has also been exposed to have natural defects.
In Yueyang, Hunan, Mr. Deng, the owner of Xiaopeng Automobile, said that after turning on automatic assisted driving on the national highway for more than ten kilometers, he suddenly encountered a car that overturned on the road, without any alarm and deceleration, and the car crashed straight up. Afterwards, the after-sales experience commissioner of Xiaopeng Automobile said that the identification of stationary objects written on the vehicle manual had a relatively large probability of failure, and believed that Xiaopeng had fulfilled the obligation to remind, and the cause of the accident was the improper operation of the owner.
Is this still Xiaopeng, who is known for his technology? In fact, Xiaopeng originally XPILOT 3.0 system in the media test found that in the reverse car can not even recognize the large stones behind the car, even though Xiaopeng always boasted that he has a considerable lead in automatic driving, and even surpassed Tesla, but in fact, Xiaopeng has considerable defects in the algorithm of static objects, until now Xiaopeng's technical team can not solve, can only add "the recognition of stationary objects has a relatively large probability of failure" in the manual to evade responsibility.
Xiaopeng Automobile originally chose the people-friendly route, it is destined to be more difficult than Weilai, the ideal to go, now there are different problems in revenue, profit, products, with a crisis to describe it is not excessive, if G9 can not let Xiaopeng turn over, even if He Xiaopeng and his company now hold 40 billion yuan sooner or later there will be a light day.