Source: Alpha Workshop Research Institute Author: Teng Yu
Photo: FAW-Volkswagen official website Editor: Xiu'er
Under the shroud of the epidemic, the automobile industry has ushered in the darkest moment. As we all know, consumption is the biggest driving force in the troika of the national economy.
In 2021, consumption has accounted for 54.3% of GDP contribution, and it will continue to rise. Automobiles, on the other hand, account for more than one-tenth of the total retail sales of consumer goods in the whole society, accounting for more than 4% of GDP.
If it covers upstream and downstream industries such as energy, chemicals, semiconductors, etc., its impetus will be even greater, even more than 10%. It can be said that the automobile industry has a huge impact on the national economy.
In March, when the grass is long and the warblers fly and everything recovers, it is also the peak season for the production of the depot. However, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic has pressed the pause button.
At present, the automobile industry under the shroud of the epidemic is facing the darkest moment, and the brittleness of new energy vehicles is being revealed.
The automobile industry is the economic lifeblood of Jilin Province
FAW, as the first automobile manufacturing plant in New China, has the reputation of "the eldest son of the Republic".
Changchun, located in the center of the northeast, the direction of industrial development can not be more obvious. That is to rely on FAW to create a whole industrial cluster of vehicle parts and automobiles.
From the perspective of the whole vehicle, there are 5 automobile manufacturing enterprises of FAW FAW Hongqi, FAW Jiefang, FAW Besturn, FAW-Volkswagen and FAW Fengyue.
From the perspective of parts and accessories, the city has a total of more than 1,100 auto parts supporting enterprises. Among them, there are 387 enterprises above designated size, and the supporting output value is nearly 160 billion yuan.
It has the world's top 100 multinational auto parts enterprises such as Continental and Weipan, and local backbone supporting enterprises such as Fuwei and Fawer.
The supporting capacity covers eight major system modules such as engine, transmission, driving, steering, braking, body, environment, and automotive electronics.
Changchun is not only an automobile city, but also a university city.
It has 27 undergraduate colleges and universities, 14 junior colleges, including Jilin University and Northeast Normal University, with more than 500,000 college students. Among them, Jilin University alone has 6 campuses and 7 campuses covering an area of up to 7.27 million square meters. It can be said that there are universities everywhere and college students everywhere.
The city's existing skilled automotive industry personnel more than 100,000 people, a total of 21 colleges and universities have opened automotive majors, reserve a large number of automotive talents.
In 2021, Changchun's GDP will be 710.312 billion yuan, accounting for 53.67% of the province's GDP. In 2021, Changchun city's statistical caliber has accumulated production and sales of 2.421 million vehicles and 2.402 million vehicles, and Changchun's automobile industry has achieved an output value of 614.3 billion yuan, accounting for 70.3% of the city's total industrial output value.
It can be said that Changchun is the economic pillar of Jilin Province, and the automobile industry is the economic pillar of Jilin Province. However, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic has dealt a heavy blow to the automobile industry in Jilin Province.
On March 13, the Changchun Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology issued the document "In order to cooperate with the overall situation of provincial and municipal epidemic prevention and control, FAW Group decided to stop production from March 13", and FAW Group decided to arrange for all planned production stops at the five major vehicle plants in Changchun.
According to the contents of the document, FAW Group's five major vehicle plants in Changchun City have all stopped production due to epidemic prevention and control, and were originally scheduled to stop production until March 16 and resume production on March 17, according to the annual production capacity, the original plan to stop production for 4 days will lead to the loss of about 48,000 vehicles at FAW-Volkswagen's Changchun plant.
However, due to the continued impact of the epidemic, faw-Volkswagen's Changchun plant was still unable to resume normal plant operations in April, and the longer shutdown time also meant that the delivery time of the vehicles produced at the plant would be delayed.
Undoubtedly, under the influence of the epidemic, the economy of Jilin Province and the national automobile industry will be greatly affected.
Shanghai has a wider reach
Shanghai, thousands of miles away.
Magic Capital, Greater Shanghai, Shanghai Beach, Paris of the East. The pillar industries of this prosperous cosmopolitan city include more than finance, electronics, steel, and petrochemicals.
In recent years, Shanghai has vigorously developed the new energy automobile industry by relying on its excellent automobile industry foundation and a sound new energy automobile industry chain. At present, Shanghai's new energy automobile industry is mainly concentrated in Jiading Anting, Pudong Jinqiao and Pudong Lingang.
It is reported that by the end of 2021, Shanghai has gathered 13,293 new energy vehicle related enterprises, and formed a complete new energy vehicle industry chain, from raw materials to vehicle manufacturing, and then to market sales, the closed-loop ecology has been completed.
Taking chips as an example, Shanghai has created the largest chip industry cluster in China, with the scale of Shanghai's chip industry accounting for 1/4 of the country and gathering more than 700 key enterprises in the industry. From the perspective of chip design, about half of the chip design companies in China are from Shanghai.
From the perspective of chip manufacturers, Pudong has gathered most of the chip manufacturing companies in Shanghai, such as top chip manufacturers such as TSMC, SMIC, and Huahong Semiconductor, and most of the domestic chip production capacity has to fall on these heads. Therefore, Shanghai stopped work, and the local supply of chips could not be discussed, which further aggravated the problem of the original lack of cores.
Tesla's Shanghai factory announced two consecutive shutdowns in March this year, the first from March 16 to 17, and the second from March 28, which has continued to this day. Since April 1, SAIC Volkswagen has suspended work at the Anting production base and carried out equipment maintenance and plant transformation projects as planned.
On April 9, Li Bin could not hold back, and Nio (NIO.US, 09866.HK) announced the suspension of production. In fact, since March, due to the epidemic, the company's supply chain partners in Jilin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places have stopped production one after another, and have not yet recovered.
On April 13, the Great Wall tank was also forced to stop production, and the delivery of the tank 300 was postponed again.
On April 14, He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng (XPEV.US, 09868.HK), also posted in the circle of friends that if Shanghai and the surrounding supply chain companies cannot find a way to dynamically resume work and production, all Chinese automakers may have to stop work and production in May.
On April 15, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and CEO of Smart Car BU, posted in the circle of friends that if Shanghai cannot resume work and production, all technology and industrial industries involving Shanghai's supply chain after May will be completely shut down, especially the automobile industry.
He also said that since mid-April, some companies have begun to cut off supply chains due to closures such as Shanghai.
Image source: CBN
Indispensable
Automobile production involves raw material industries such as steel, metallurgy, plastics, ceramics, and more than ten industrial sectors such as electronics and electrical appliances, which are closely related to the automobile industry. The total number of general auto parts will exceed 10,000, and the cost of parts accounts for 70% to 80% of the total cost of a vehicle.
The automotive industry chain is large and complex, and there is a strong upstream and downstream dependence. In general, a car has hundreds of suppliers, and a problem in a certain link will cause great interference to the production of the whole vehicle.
Not only chips, but also every link in the automotive industry chain is an indispensable existence.
Even if the production of some parts and components has not been disturbed by the epidemic, the raw materials cannot be supplied normally, and the entire industrial chain is also disconnected.
Although enterprises have secondary, tertiary or standby suppliers for parts, they can only sigh when there are systemic problems in the overall supply.
This impact is also transmitted to the upstream of the industrial chain, and the crazy rise of lithium carbonate has to bow its head. According to the Shanghai non-ferrous quotation, lithium carbonate has continuously fallen back to break through the 50,000 mark since the price of 502,500 on April 7, and the price of 495,000 on April 14.
The reason behind this is not difficult to understand. The depot stopped production, the decline in demand for lithium batteries led to weak demand for materials such as cathodes, the wait-and-see atmosphere of material factories was stronger, and the price of lithium carbonate was at a high level, and there was no reason to follow, so there was a decline.
Source: Flush iFinD
The remarks of He Xiaopeng and Yu Chengdong are by no means alarmist.
"It should not be (completely discontinued), see how to save yourself." On April 15, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the All-China Passenger Transport Association, said in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the pressure on national automobile production and sales in April was indeed very large.
In addition, Chen Shihua, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and director of the China Automobile Industry Economic and Technical Information Research Institute, said in an interview, "There is no such absolute, only that there may be a large-scale suspension of production."
Although the time for general car companies to rely on inventory to maintain normal production is limited in the case of interruption of parts replenishment, the specific conditions of the supply chain of each production enterprise are different, and it is also possible to achieve normal production by finding alternative channels and supplementing production resources such as accessories
However, if Shanghai, Jilin and other places cannot resume work and production for a long time, it will definitely have a negative impact on China's automotive industry.
In March this year, China's automobile production and sales data has shown some pressure. On April 11, the Association announced the sales volume of the domestic passenger car market in March, and the data showed that the retail new cars in the passenger car market in March were 1.579 million units, down 10.5% year-on-year and 25.6% month-on-month.
Automotive sales in March 2022 are expected to reach 2.249 million units, up 29.5% month-on-month and 11% year-on-year.
Due to the impact of the Spring Festival holiday in February, the reference significance of the month-on-month data is limited. March used to be the time node for car sales to start, and handing over such a report card cannot be said to be optimistic.
The latest data from automotive industry data forecasting company AutoForecast Solutions (hereinafter referred to as AFS). As of April 10, due to the shortage of chips, the cumulative production of the global auto market this year has been reduced by about 1.4378 million units. Among them, the cumulative production reduction in China's automobile market continued to remain unchanged at 70,900 units, accounting for 4.9% of the cumulative production reduction in the global automobile market.
The tight supply of chips still affects the production of car companies, and the epidemic factor has forced some auto parts and automakers to stop work. Under the double impact of the two, it is expected that the performance of most domestic car companies in the past two months will be affected to varying degrees.
Last year, China produced 26.082 million vehicles, and Jilin and Shanghai, as China's major automobile cities, accounted for about 20% of the country's automobile production, that is, about 400,000 vehicles per month.
FAW Group's overall factory capacity that has been constrained by production capacity accounts for 46%, SAIC Motor (600140. SH) factories have also been affected. According to relevant professional estimates, the loss of sales in April may reach more than 250,000 vehicles.
Among them, the first to bear the brunt is the new energy vehicle.
Brittle new energy vehicles
In the new energy vehicle industry chain, there is a more interesting phenomenon. In such a hot market, parts and components are full of money, but car companies are losing a mess.
BAIC BJEV lost 11.7 billion yuan in two years, and this domestic pure electric vehicle company, which has been elected as the top seller for seven consecutive years, is now facing the risk of delisting.
Not in an isolated case, new energy OEMs are facing the same problem.
In 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's total revenue was RMB20.988 billion, an increase of 259.1% compared with RMB5.844 billion in the same period of 2020.
However, the net loss in 2021 was $4,863 million, compared to a net loss of $2,732 million in 2020. Net loss increased by 78% compared to the same period in 2020.
On March 25, NIO released its 2021 annual financial report showing that NIO delivered 91,400 new cars in the whole year, an increase of 109.1% year-on-year; during the period, the company's operating income was 36.136 billion yuan, an increase of 122.27% year-on-year; the net loss was 4.02 billion yuan, narrowing by 24.3% year-on-year.
As strong as BYD (002594. SZ) was also powerless to escape. In the first three quarters of 2021, when BYD's revenue increased by nearly 40%, its net profit fell by 28.43% to 2.443 billion yuan.
New energy vehicle factories sell a car for a small loss of 10,000, and more than 50,000.
New energy vehicles are full of snow in the cold winter, but the parts are in the sun all year round.
According to the announcement issued by catalonia (300750.SZ) on January 27, its net profit in 2021 is expected to be 14 billion yuan - 16.5 billion yuan, an increase of 150.75% - 195.52% year-on-year. As the world's largest share of power battery manufacturers, its profits have surpassed most domestic car companies.
Ganfeng Lithium (002460.SZ) rolled up 5.284 billion yuan in 2021, up 410.25% year-on-year. Huayou Cobalt (603799.SH) expects to achieve a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies in 2021 between 3.7 billion and 4.2 billion, an increase of 217.64% to 260.56% year-on-year.
The profits of lithium battery components such as the negative electrode leader Pu Tailai (6023659.SH) and electrolyte Tianci Materials (002709.SZ) have increased significantly.
Turning over Wei Xiaoli's financial report, it can be found that it is not that he did not make money. Taking Weilai as an example, the gross profit margin in 2021 reached 18.9%, compared with only 11.5% in the previous year, and the dividends brought by the scale effect of the manufacturing industry are highlighting.
However, the period cost of new energy vehicles is huge, just like the floodgates, and the profits naturally cannot be retained.
For the whole year of 2021, NIO's R&D expenses were 4.592 billion yuan, an increase of 84.6% over the previous year. Xiaopeng's research and development expenses in 2021 are also as high as 4.114 billion.
Only the power exchange technology WEILAI has invested more than 15.5 billion yuan in four years.
Nio is even more generous in terms of expenses, and in the whole year of 2021, NIO's sales, general and administrative expenses were 6.878 billion yuan, an increase of 74.9% year-on-year.
Under the large-scale investment and expense of research and development, the income is already insufficient, and the result is an increase in debt.
In the past year, NIO's asset-liability ratio increased by nearly 8 percentage points to 58.03%.
As the automotive industry accelerates the pace of electrification, intellectualization and networking, the open and dark struggle between new energy vehicle manufacturers has entered a white-hot situation.
In the competition of new energy vehicles, the pursuit of technology is the biggest main line. Major manufacturers in the research and development of the investment is not stingy, open a lot, intending to take the lead in driving into the high-speed track brought about by technological change, throw away the opponent.
Research and development is too expensive, like an arms race that has intensified, and tens of billions of dollars have been quietly smashed into it for several years. If the direction of technology research and development is biased with the actual demand, it will undoubtedly cause a heavy blow to car companies.
The dividends of the new energy vehicle market have been snatched away by power battery, chip and other parts companies, while there are few new energy vehicle companies that make money, and some OEMs even have huge losses.
The brittleness of new energy vehicle factories is being fully revealed.
There is no need to be pessimistic
After 45 days of hard work, all cities and prefectures in Jilin Province have achieved the goal of zeroing out the social aspects of epidemic prevention and control, and are orderly promoting the resumption of work and production.
The third line of the final assembly of China FAW Hongqi Ulsan Plant recently achieved single-shift resumption, marking the official start of the resumption of work and production of China FAW. Next, China FAW's FAW-Volkswagen, FAW Jiefang, FAW Toyota and other factories in Changchun City, Jilin Province, will also resume work and production.
It is reported that at present, many factories of SAIC Motor Group are still in production and operation, for example, 4,000 employees in saic motor passenger car lingang base are still in the closed-loop management of the factory, maintaining production operations.
According to the relevant person in charge of the Lingang base, priority has been given to the transportation of parts to the Lingang base to ensure the normal operation of production
At present, SAIC's production enterprises have conducted a survey of the preparations for the resumption of work and production, and the results of the survey were fed back to the Group's Quality and Economic Department before April 17 (Sunday), and the production enterprises began to start the stress test of resuming work and production on April 18 (Monday) according to the situation. Once the stress test is successful, the company will arrange the production of vehicles and parts as soon as possible.
New energy vehicles will usher in a wave of repair after the epidemic is controlled, and the industry is still in a high boom.
However, on the other hand, the competition between depots has become more and more intense, and the slightest carelessness will lose all the games. New energy vehicle companies are walking on thin ice on the road ahead
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