"Ning Wang" fell below the trillion market value, and the average shareholder lost two Teslas

Image source @ Visual China

"Ning Wang" is still "Ning Wang", but the market value has fallen below 1 trillion yuan, and the ChiNext board has fallen by 3.66%.

Even this kind of "investment anxiety" has driven the investment status of the entire battery industry, making many investment institutions and enterprises fall into a sea of "buying, buying and buying". Even in the investment of the overall battery track, car manufacturers, battery manufacturers, and the car-making army that have continuously joined, their investment enthusiasm has even raced through the previous VC/PE.

How did "King Ning" buy and buy?

However, the Ningde era, which has long occupied the top spot in the global power battery loading volume, is now facing a competitive situation that can be described as the king of Ning dominating the lead and the wolves are eyeing the tiger.

How to continue to hold their throne is a problem worth thinking about and adhering to, from the action of the Ningde era, it is mainly the following three points: one is to continuously develop new technologies, the second is to continue to invest in expansion, and the third is to continue to "buy, buy and buy".

But first, the new technology of the battery is not so good to break through. In Tesla's case, its vigorously promoted 4680 battery is expected to increase the vehicle's mileage by 16% and reduce costs by 14%. But it was released as early as September 2020, and it is expected to meet the needs of 1.3 million vehicles by the end of this year, which is not to mention, and it is not so easy to achieve cost advantages and standardization at present.

And Kazuo Zhongxin, CEO of Panasonic Energy, also said that even Panasonic had to "expend a lot of physical effort" to develop its 4680 battery. Even though Tesla already thinks Panasonic's 4680 battery is usable, it is not possible to start mass production of Tesla's 4680 battery until fiscal year 2023 (April 2023 - March 2024).

In this way, the latter two are particularly important to the Ningde era, but in fact, these two actions can be classified as "buy, buy, buy". Investment and expansion is to buy equipment for themselves, and continuous foreign investment is to prepare for the second curve of growth and upstream and downstream coordination.

Looking at the trajectory of expansion first, on November 6 last year alone, CATL officially announced the investment news of Guizhou Gui'an New Area and Xiamen at the same time, the former 7 billion yuan, the latter 8 billion. This was followed by the announcement in December that it would invest 24 billion yuan in Yibin, Sichuan Province, and another 10.5 billion yuan in February to expand the production capacity of Times SAIC.

In the list of new projects invested in power batteries in the first quarter of this year alone, BYD, Hive Energy, Sunwoda, Zhongxin Airlines, Envision Power, Huipeng Energy, Lishen Battery, Ewell Lithium Energy, Jiewei Power and other enterprises are constantly updated. Not to mention, Geely and Sunwoda, FAW and BYD, SAIC and Qingshan all made various moves against each other in the first quarter of this year.

Industrial capital has won, and the battery needs to continue to follow up

Previously, in the investment of the Internet and mobile Internet, financial investors can completely account for the vast proportion of investment, but at present, in terms of the vast hard technology investment track such as chips, batteries, and energy, it can only be regarded as an equal division at best.

Especially in the battery-related investment competition and chase, the downstream industry chain capital represented by automobile manufacturers, the vested interest industrial capital represented by the Ningde era, and the new entrants to the industry represented by Xiaomi Huawei have all shown strong competitiveness, and then financial investors come to share a piece of the pie.

The logic behind this is also well understood, the upstream of new energy materials, the middle pillar of the power battery and other key products, downstream vehicle applications, for financial investors, more is the return, although it is very important, but for the industry, is the lifeblood is grasped in the hands of others, only by mastering the industrial chain resources can survive.

This urgency is vividly reflected in the body of the whole vehicle manufacturer. We take the independent financing of Sunwoda's power battery, among the 19 institutions with the first round of financing of 2.43 billion yuan, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal all participated, and SAIC, Dongfeng, and GAC were also among them. Ideal is known for its door slamming in the industry, and also directly invested 400 million yuan, becoming the fifth largest shareholder of Sunwoda Auto Battery, with a shareholding ratio of 3.2%.

Foreign car companies are no exception, and in the new round of financing of 2.75 billion US dollars by Swedish power battery company Northvolt, Volkswagen has increased by about 609 million US dollars to maintain the company's 20% stake without dilution. Volkswagen has also invested in solid-state battery developer QuantumScape on several occasions.

Industry personnel also directly complained that the battery manufacturers and car manufacturers have overcome the difficulties together, but the refusal of the head company to share makes the latter day become particularly difficult, passed out, most of the car manufacturers have invariably increased the price of the car. But this is not a long-term solution, so it is reasonable to support battery suppliers with two and three supplies.

Still above the automobile, for example, it has signed a cooperation agreement with the Aoyama business and is expected to build a power battery cell and system project with an annual output of 20GWh. This is also the first time that SAIC Motor has established a battery joint venture plant with a third-party company after establishing a joint venture with CATL in 2017.

Not long ago, the JUWAN Technology Research Institute incubated by GAC was exposed by the news of Tencent's investment, which was led by GAC Group, jointly funded by GAC Capital, the pilot technical team of GAC Research Institute and a third-party strategic partner shareholding platform.

The second is the median product suppliers such as CATL and BYD. Although orders fly like snowflakes, even if overtime is in short supply, it is still unable to catch up with the demand side, in order to compress costs and not lose orders, it is inevitable to make capital actions to cope with market competition.

Even Sunwoda, while increasing its own capital, has recently participated in the financing of more than 50 million yuan in the high-energy era of an all-solid-state lithium battery company. The solid-state battery technology in the high-energy era is also the direction of the leading efforts of industry leaders such as Ningde Era, Ganfeng Lithium Industry, and BYD.

What about Xiaomi, which is the official announcement of the car? The honeycomb energy, Ganfeng lithium battery, Weilan new energy do not say, and many times re-injected investment, but also laid out the energy chain group, Suzhou Zhilu and so on. In order to accelerate car manufacturing, Xiaomi has invested in more than 30 automotive industry chain enterprises.

Huawei is also constantly following up with Xiaomi on the same target, such as Weilan New Energy, and constantly expanding new, such as Zhongke Haina, which is now the third largest shareholder of the latter, accounting for 13.33% of the shares. Huawei has also repeatedly stressed that it does not build cars.

Everyone has identified that the battery, one of the most technologically valuable plates in the new energy industry chain, after all, the battery can be as high as 40% to 50% of the cost of the whole vehicle, and can be extended in the upstream and downstream industrial chain, which can be regarded as a very good target.

In the first quarter of this year, China Innovation Airlines filed a prospectus for an IPO of US$1.5 billion (about 9.48 billion yuan). In 2018, China Innovation Airlines ranked ninth in the top ten, and now, it has successfully ranked among the top three.

And according to the prospectus of China Innovation Airlines, between 2019 and 2021, it is the only one among the top ten power battery companies in China that has an annual year-on-year growth rate of more than 100%. Among them, GAC Group has made great contributions.

Of course, a number of VCs/PE are also constantly entering the investment of the battery track, for example, in the investment of Juwan Technology Research, Potential Energy Capital, Borun Capital, and Hanhui Capital have appeared. In the financing of more than 50 million yuan in the high-energy era, it was led by Tongchuang Weiye, and Sunwoda, Zhuhai High-tech Venture Capital, CICC Chuanyu Phoenix Fund and other institutions participated.

For example, in the previous Series A financing of 3.5 billion yuan by Hive Energy, BOC Investment and SDIC China Merchants jointly led the investment, and other investors including Financial Street Capital, Changzhou Venture Capital, Zhejiang University Jiuzhi, IDG, Kaihui Fund, Haitong Kaiyuan, Dezaihou Capital, Great Wall Holdings, etc. were among them.

At the end of March, after Weilan New Energy completed a new round of strategic financing, in addition to Xiaomi, Huawei Hubble, geely blue opportunities, it also includes the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Three Gorges Capital, Zhongguancun Venture Capital, Chinese Academy of Sciences Venture Capital, Tianqi Lithium, IDG Capital, Wuyuefeng Capital, Weilai Capital and so on.

Among the countless investment and financing, there are indeed more updated investment opportunities. Wang Chuanfu predicted that the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in the mainland will reach 35% by the end of this year.

Perhaps after that, the investment in the battery track will be more violent.