Wei Jianjun, the owner of Great Wall Motors with a rural background and a military background, has been in charge of Great Wall Motors for 30 years, and the leader of China's automobile manufacturing industry is reluctant to look back.
Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Baoding City, Hebei Province, Great Wall Motor was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2003 and is the first private vehicle enterprise in China to be listed on the H-share market in Hong Kong. Subsequently, in 2011, it achieved a domestic A-share listing.
Great Wall Motor headquarters 6 kilometers to the north, is Wei Jianjun's birthplace of Shizhuang Village, in 1990, when Wei Jianjun first took over the Great Wall, it has an assembly car business, sales of up to 10 million, the good times are not long. In 1994, the state stipulated that automobile production should be managed by the "catalog system", and Great Wall Motors did not obtain production qualifications and once became a "black household".
(Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motor)
In 1999, he became the king of pickup trucks, and in the eyes of the local government, it was still just a small township enterprise that only produced pickup trucks, which could not be compared with the state-owned enterprises at that time, and naturally paid little attention to it.
Even today, SUV is a great success, passenger cars are still the heart of Great Wall Motors and Wei Jianjun, and at present, Euler, a low-end new energy brand under Great Wall Motors, can find several cars.
Auto giants, great leap forward development
On April 24, 2022, Great Wall Motor announced its first quarter financial report, the company achieved total revenue of 33.619 billion yuan in the first quarter, an increase of 8.04% year-on-year, and net profit of 1.634 billion yuan, a slight decrease of 0.34% year-on-year; excluding non-net profit of 13.03%, down 2.41% year-on-year, has recorded negative growth for four consecutive quarters.
"The Way to Understand the Car" took a closer look, and during the reporting period, the company received government subsidies of 800 million yuan in revenue, and the settlement incentives of Shangrao and Daye companies were 200 million yuan respectively. Although Great Wall Motor's net profit declined in the first quarter, it has narrowed compared with the past.
At the beginning of 2022, Great Wall Motor set an annual sales target of 1.9 million units, but only 15% of the target has been achieved in the first quarter.
According to public data, in 2021, Great Wall Motor's sales reached 1.28 million units, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year, and sales exceeded one million units for six consecutive years. Among them, the sales of new energy models reached 127,000 units, accounting for 10.7% of the total sales, a record high.
Bright on the outside and full of hidden dangers on the inside, the growth rate of Great Wall Motors' net profit once slowed down. For the full year of 2021, Great Wall Motor's operating income increased by 32% year-on-year to 136.3 billion yuan, and its net profit increased by 26.45% year-on-year to 6.781 billion yuan. Compared with 2020, the company's operating income growth has increased, but the growth rate of net profit has slowed down. In the third quarter of 2021, Great Wall Motor's net profit fell by 1.7%, and in the fourth quarter, net profit fell by 33.8% year-on-year.
Relevant research institutions said that the reason for the decline in the net profit of Great Wall Motors is that the costs related to the rise in raw material prices, the compensation of charging rights and interests of Euler users, and equity incentive fees.
In November 2021, some Euler Good Cat owners complained that the chip of the Good Cat model was not in the right version, and Euler Good Cat Car was suspected of stealing the chip, replacing the original "Qualcomm eight-core chip" with an ordinary "quad-core chip", seriously damaging the interests of consumers. Euler brand side also recognized.
To this end, Euler Automobile and its parent company Great Wall Motors give users a cashback of charging rights. Subsequently, the Euler black cat and white cat models were also briefly discontinued, and at present, only the Euler good cat, which is priced at around 150,000, several other models are being prepared before the listing, and the Euler brand has also entered a bottleneck period.
It is not difficult to see that in 2021, Great Wall Motors began to pursue the strategy of "having more children and fighting", and Great Wall Pickup, Haval, Euler, WEY, tanks, salon brands, its power battery company Honeycomb Energy and Intelligent Driving Company.
In order to further increase investment, Great Wall Motor also issued a total of 3.5 billion yuan of convertible bonds in June 2021, which were listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in July.
Wei Jianjun advocated that multi-brand co-development, the overall layout of the industrial chain, the management of the adjustment, the automobile industry is in a period of change, Great Wall Motors is also in a stage of high growth and high risk in parallel, internal change, ushered in the management change, a new round of industry changes in the Great Wall Motors can stand out.
Wei Jianjun + Wang Fengying, the old partner changed
For 30 years, the management combination of Wei Jianjun and Wang Fengying has joined forces to create an "automobile empire" that has allowed Great Wall Motors to grow from a thin township car company to one of the heads of China's automobile enterprises.
(Wang Fengying)
In 2022, the "best partner" changed, and on the evening of January 24, Great Wall Motor issued an announcement that the company's board of directors received a written resignation report from the company's vice chairman, general manager Wang Fengying, and executive director Yang Zhijuan.
Among them, Wang Fengying applied for resignation as an executive director, vice chairman and member of the Strategy and Sustainable Development Committee of the company due to work needs, and will continue to serve as the general manager of the company.
Yang Zhijuan applied for resignation as an executive director of the company on the same day due to work needs, and will continue to serve as the assistant general manager of the company's production technology development center.
Among them, the announcement also mentioned that the board of directors of Great Wall Motor nominated Mr. Zhao Guoqing and Ms. Li Hongshuo as candidates for executive directors of the seventh board of directors.
According to public information, Zhao Guoqing was born in 1978, joined Great Wall Motors in 2000, and has served as the deputy general manager of Great Wall Motors since June 2010. Born in 1984, Li joined Great Wall Motor in 2007 as the Financial Director of Great Wall Motors.
Great Wall Motors also publicly told the media that this is a normal change of directors, and the work they are responsible for will not be adjusted.
Wang Fengying and Wei Jianjun have partnered for many years, so that Great Wall Motors has gone from a local car company in Baoding, Hebei Province, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, to a car company that has won the SUV sales champion for consecutive years, from pickup trucks and SUVs. No matter how the Great Wall is defined inside, in the eyes of the outside world, Wang Fengying is equivalent to the "second in command" of Great Wall Motors, and is also a rare female president of Chinese automobile companies.
Wang Fengying, loyal to the Great Wall for 30 years ~
In 1991, at the age of 21, Wang Fengying joined Great Wall Motors. Wei Jianjun was 26 years old at the time. In just over two years of employment, Wang Fengying was promoted to general manager of sales. In 1996, Great Wall Motors developed the first generation of pickup truck Great Wall Deer (Deere), if there is an impression of friends know, it is imitating Toyota's Hella Hilux model. What made Wang Fengying famous in a battle was the "Great Wall Pickup Truck Marketing".
Wang Fengying led the team to learn from home appliance companies and attach importance to cash flow. That is, starting from Piccadil, Wang Fengying made an important move, changing the original "agency system" to "distribution system", and all the cars were also implemented "first pay and then start", reducing the risk of payment collection of Great Wall Motors. The Great Wall has determined to take the road of "specialization", but the design has always practiced "imitation".
In just two years, the Great Wall pickup truck won the pickup truck sales championship for the first time, that is, in 1998. From 2001 to 2006, with the listing of Sai Ling, Saiku and Fengjun successively, great wall pickup trucks gradually formed a product pattern of high and low collocation.
At present, the Great Wall Fengjun pickup truck model is dozens of models, the existing two series of models - Fengjun 5, Fengjun 6, Fengjun 7, covering from economical and practical to high-end intelligent and other market segments, and then also released the Great Wall Cannon brand, is also a hit product, today, the Great Wall pickup truck has the ability to cover all areas of the market.
Great Wall pickup trucks have been exported to more than 100 countries and regions such as Australia and Italy.
In 2002, Great Wall Motors entered the SUV track alone, the first model "Saifu", the door price of 77,800 yuan, due to the imitation of the 90s Toyota 4Runner model, the new car has a good appearance, which caused a lot of sensation in the market at that time, breaking the pattern of the joint venture SUV model priced at about 200,000 yuan. In 2003, Seffer's sales volume won the top three in the national SUV market.
In 2003, Great Wall Motors was listed in Hong Kong. On the road of development of Great Wall Motors, it has not stopped imitating the design of suspects, in 2005 the Great Wall Haval CUV imitated the Isuzu Axiom model, and in 2010 the Haval CUV was renamed Haval H5; in 2008, the Great Wall Genie imitated the Fiat Panda model; the Great Wall Dazzling imitated the Sciion xA model, the Great Wall Cool Bear imitated the Sciion xB model; the Great Wall Jiayu imitated the Toyota Voxy/Noah model; and the Great Wall C30 imitated the Toyota Vios model in 2010 The 2011 Great Wall H6 imitated the Honda CR-V model; the 2012 Great Wall C50 imitated the Honda Civic model.
Only the originality of the WEY series models has been affirmed by Chinese consumers, and the models launched today, such as tank 300, tank 500, Euler black cat, lightning cat, and punk cat series, seem to have blown up a wind of cottage imitation.
Around 2010, Great Wall Motors began to gradually make small achievements in the field of pickup trucks and SUVs. At this time, Wang Fengying advocated entering the car and began to persuade Wei Jianjun to test the mainstream car market. If Great Wall Motors does not make cars, the outside world will think that Great Wall Motors is a marginal automobile company and does not enter the mainstream.
Wei Jianjun listened to Wang Fengying's suggestion and started the car business. However, contrary to expectations, the first car of the Great Wall "Genie" was launched, the market response was far lower than expected, Great Wall Motors began to be questioned by the market, and the confidence of dealers was once shaken.
Great Wall Motors once faced a difficult choice, when Wang Fengying's authority within the Great Wall was disputed, : In 2008, Great Wall Motors for the car business, successively smashed 10 billion yuan of funds, has launched five or six cars, the manufacturing level was also one of the best in domestic production that year, but it was not applauded.
Regarding the car business to go and stay, "The Way to Understand the Car" learned that at that time, there was no unified proposal within Great Wall Motors, and finally the high price invited the strategy company to do strategic diagnosis, and the suggestion was to stop the car business and build an SUV in depth.
Since then, Great Wall Motors' business has changed, adopting a focus strategy and focusing on SUV models, and from 2011 to 2021, haval H6 has become the sales champion in China's SUV market for 11 consecutive years.
In a public interview, Wang Fengying said in his keynote speech that looking back at the 30-year history of Great Wall Motors, he only did three things right: 1, let the company do subtraction; 2, let the decision have consensus; 3, let the implementation not be out of shape.
Relevant information shows that the two have worked together for many years, about the "decision consensus", there are many debates between them, 20 years, from the commercial layout, it is enough to see the tacit cooperation between the two sides.
In recent years, Wang Fengying has rarely appeared in public, and Wei Jianjun has come to the foreground, and public information shows that Wang Fengying is more as a deputy to the National People's Congress, making suggestions on China's automobile development and globalization.
The future is uncertain
As Wang Fengying's role changes, Great Wall Motors is also undergoing more changes.
In the past two years, great turmoil in the internal personnel of Great Wall Motors, Wei Jianjun has implemented the rejuvenation of the management of Great Wall Motors. In 2020, Great Wall Motors proposed to break down the differences in management levels and age barriers and implement the "rotating president system". Wang Fengying was born in 1970 and has previously served as president, and the first rotating president Meng Xiangjun was born in 1979.
"The Way to Understand cars" has visited the headquarters of Great Wall Motors in Baoding many times, and many Locals in Baoding describe Great Wall Motors as "Baoding Second Prison", which is used to describe the strict management style of Great Wall Motors' militarization. The local can also hit the "European travel" online car, which is also a local landmark enterprise in Baoding.
In 2020, on the 30th anniversary of Great Wall Motors, Wei Jianjun asked in a 3-minute short film: "Will Great Wall Motors survive next year?" ”
In June 2021, at the 2025 strategy conference of Great Wall Motors, Wei Jianjun proposed that "leading the new track, there is only one opportunity for Chinese car brands". Based on the new positioning of "global layout", "R&D investment", "enterprise change" and "user operation", Great Wall Motors will carry out comprehensive and thorough innovation and change, and promote the transformation of Great Wall Motors into a global technology travel company.
Wei Jianjun, who wears a dark blue T-shirt with jeans and a tall figure, announced the strategic goal for 2025: in 2025, achieve global annual sales of 4 million vehicles, of which 80% are new energy vehicles, operating income of more than 600 billion yuan, in the next 5 years, the cumulative investment in research and development reached 100 billion yuan.
According to the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)" issued by the State Council, in 2025, the sales volume of new energy vehicles will reach about 20% of the total sales of new cars, and if the total sales volume of new vehicles in 2025 is 25 million, 20% will be 5 million. According to Great Wall Motor's plan, the sales of new energy vehicles will reach 3.2 million, which has exceeded half of the total sales of new energy vehicles predicted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
If this goal is to be achieved, Great Wall Motor will increase its sales by 3 to 4 times in four years from 1.28 million units in 2021; new energy vehicles will increase from 127,000 units in 2021 to 3.2 million units; and if it follows the R&D investment plan, the R&D expenditure will also double.
In terms of sales, Great Wall Motor maintained a growth rate of 15.2% in 2021, higher than the industry level (China's total automobile sales in 2021 increased by 3.1% year-on-year). Great Wall Motor's profit cow, "National God Car" Haval H6 sales in 2021 continued to decline, from 364,000 to 360,000 vehicles, which is related to new and old models, new energy vehicles, in 2021, Great Wall Motor's new energy vehicle sales increased by 117% year-on-year, and then it is more important to bear the burden of growth.
Focusing on dispersion, Haval SUV sales declined
Great Wall Motors hopes to attract more young people, and its 2021 semi-annual report has repeatedly mentioned the "Z generation" and "new generation", in the five major brands of Great Wall Motors, Haval, WEY, Euler, Great Wall pickup trucks and tanks,
Fast forward to 2022, the Haval H6 entered a rapid decline lineup, and in March 2022, the Association learned that the Haval H6 sold 19,303 units in March, down 43.7% year-on-year, ranking fourth in the sales list.
The entire Haval SUV family is at a disadvantage, with Great Wall Motor's Haval brand selling 54,534 units in March, down 19% year-on-year and up 30% month-on-month. In the first quarter, the cumulative sales volume of 166,756 vehicles, down 25% year-on-year, the growth rate is far less than weipai, tanks, etc., as the quantum brand of Great Wall Motors, it also indirectly led to the main reason for the decline of 9% of the overall sales of Great Wall Motors.
Among them, the Haval H6, the pillar model of the Haval brand, has a discount of about 10,000 yuan in some regional market terminals, with a starting price of less than 90,000 yuan, despite this, sales in the first quarter only sold 64,626 vehicles, down 43% year-on-year, less than the BYD Song family (73,712 vehicles in the same period).
In terms of other models, Haval's sales of only 4,598 vehicles in March were lower than the Sales Record of 5,009 units in February, down 8% month-on-month, and in comparison, the previous generation model F7 sold 10,085 units in January last year, more than double that of March this year. Haval Big Dog sold 9,313 units in March, up 25% month-on-month and 55% year-on-year, making it one of the few rising models under the brand.
Regarding the reasons for the decline in haval brand sales, Great Wall Motor officials said: "Affected by the epidemic in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Jilin and other places, a number of parts suppliers have been affected, resulting in limited factory production capacity. ”
Careful friends learned that the Geely brand, which is also an independent brand, also has suppliers in the above regions mentioned by Great Wall Motors, Geely Automobile sold 75,699 vehicles in March, an increase of 35.9% month-on-month, down 7.4% year-on-year, and the cumulative sales volume in the first quarter reached 244,018 vehicles, with sales exceeding Haval's 77,000 vehicles, equivalent to more than a month more than a month of sales.
Under the great changes of the automotive industry, over the past few years, the Haval H6, which focuses on fuel vehicles, has also been impacted by new energy models such as Tesla Model Y and BYD Song. The latest news shows that Great Wall Motor's self-developed DHT-PHEV hybrid technology, Haval H6 oil-electric hybrid DHT model has been unveiled, and the spy photos of the plug-in hybrid PHEV model have also been exposed.
The WEY curve pulls down the Great Wall's sales
At the end of 2016, Great Wall Motors released the "WEY brand" positioning luxury SUVs, Chinese name Wei Pai, and today's Wei Pai is named after the surname "Wei" of Wei Jianjun, the founder of Great Wall Motors.
Wei Jianjun has publicly stated that "gambling on the surname, can not fail, can only succeed", but after the release of WEY for 6 years, although the group tilted a lot of resources, the development is still not satisfactory.
Public data shows that in the two years before the release of the WEY brand, the cumulative sales exceeded 200,000, which is the same as Geely Lynk & Co., which is a model for domestic luxury brands. At that time, the WEY brand launched two SUV models, VV7 and VV5, in the name of "VV + digital", in just half a year, the monthly sales of VV5 and VV7 models both exceeded 10,000, and the ANNUAL SALES OF THE WEY brand reached 86,000 units in 2017. In August 2018, the WEY VV6 was officially launched, and the WEY family product camp was further enriched, and sales in 2018 further jumped to 139,000 units.
In 2021, the newly independent tank brand mainly plays off-road SUVs, emphasizing a better and updated experience for young users. At present, the sales performance of tank 300 is good, and the tank 300 is transformed from the chassis technology and power of Haval H9, and the market attention of tank 500 is also good.
The independence of tanks has brought a lot of impact on WEY's data and momentum, resulting in 2021, in the territory of Great Wall Motors, Haval sold 770,000 units, accounting for 60%, pickup truck sales of 233,000 units, accounting for 18%; Euler sold 135,000 units, accounting for 11%; tank sales of 85,000 units, accounting for 7%. Wei brand sales are the lowest, only 58,000 units, accounting for 5%. It ranks first among the four major passenger car brands of Great Wall Motors (Haval, Euler, Tank, WEY).
For the WEY brand that cannot fail, it completely negates the early strategy of the WEY brand, and it has successively discontinued the "VV + digital" series of models, using the "coffee intelligence" platform to create models, equipped with intelligent hybrid DHT technology, and successively launched replacement models mocha, macchiato, and latte.
Careful friends have found that the WEY brand positioning has also been updated from "China Luxury SUV" to "a new generation of smart cars". Behind it is a major strategic adjustment of the WEY brand, that is, from a traditional fuel vehicle brand to a new energy vehicle brand that focuses on intelligent hybrid technology, which will no longer launch traditional fuel vehicle models in the future. Obviously, after several years of market verification, the WEY brand has not been recognized and recognized by consumers.
Public information shows that LI Ruifeng, CEO of WEY brand, is a high-level native of the Great Wall system, but also a confidant of Wei Jianjun, who graduated from Hebei University of Economics and Business in 2003 and chose to join Great Wall Motors as a salesman. In 2009, he was promoted to deputy general manager of Great Wall Motor Sales Company, in 2014 he was promoted to general manager of Great Wall Motor Sales Company, and in mid-2020, he became ceo of Weipai.
From entering Great Wall Motors, never leaving in the nearly two years since he took over Weipai, Li Ruifeng has only done one thing: the second rush is no longer the traditional high-end market, but the high-end new energy market.
In 2018, Great Wall Motor's new energy brand Euler became independent.
In 2018, Great Wall Motor and BMW Motor established a pure electric joint venture, Beam Automotive. According to the plan, the joint venture will realize the domestic production of electric MINI in 2023, unfortunately, as of now, the joint venture project has not made clear progress.
In 2021, Great Wall Motor established a subsidiary "Sharon Zhixing", and in November 2021, the first model of Sharon, a high-end sub-brand of Great Wall, "Mecha Dragon", was unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show. For the brand, Wei Jianjun said that it will adopt a new way of operation and will take the hydrogen energy and pure electric route.
Will the transformation of the Great Wall Motor industry be successful?
In recent years, you will find that the product line of Great Wall Motors has blossomed in an all-round way, while on the other hand, Wei Jianjun has also made a comprehensive layout around the new energy industry chain. There is actually a very important reason for this, that is, the failure of the car business was related to that year, the production base of Great Wall Motors was located in the north, Hebei was backward in the auto parts industry at that time, there was no industrial chain to support Great Wall Motors to produce cheap cars, since then, Great Wall Motors has been developing its own parts industry.
With the spun off of Hive Energy and Mimu Zhixing from Great Wall Motors, it is Wei Jianjun's attack on technological change and also Great Wall Motors' attempt to cope with industrial transformation.
In 2018, Great Wall Motors began to adjust its strategy and organizational structure, the core of which was to do subtraction, divest the parts business, establish an independent parts company and seek to go public.
In terms of batteries, Honeycomb Energy, a power battery company established in 2016, was spun off from Great Wall Motors and is now squeezed into the top 10 of the global power battery installed capacity list. In 2021, The Hive Energy hatched by Great Wall Motors completed three rounds of financing of A, B and B+ rounds, totaling nearly 20 billion yuan, and the production capacity target of Hive Energy in 2025 has been increased from 200GWh to 600GWh within one year.
In January 2022, CITIC Securities disclosed that it recently signed a listing counseling agreement with Hive Energy, and plans to complete the preparation of the listing application documents for Hive Energy by March this year.
For hydrogen fuel cells, Great Wall Motors has been doing more than 6 years of research and development, but the world's first C-class hydrogen fuel cell SUV planned to be launched in 2021 has not yet been cashed. In the hydrogen energy sector, in 2019, Great Wall Motors invested 450 million yuan to establish Weishi Energy, and Great Wall Motors also acquired the heavy truck enterprises of Long March Automobile to achieve the landing of hydrogen energy strategy in the field of commercial vehicles.
Intelligent driving company, public information, in November 2019, the intelligent driving part of Great Wall Motors was spun off and established. Nowadays, intelligent driving company Mowei Zhixing has been valued at 1 billion US dollars, and at the end of February 2021, Zhixing obtained a financing from Great Wall Motors, and 12 days later, it completed hundreds of millions of yuan pre-A round of financing, and the investors include Shougang, Meituan, Hillhouse Capital, etc.
Wei Jianjun found Baidu veterans, Gu Weihao, the former general manager of Baidu's intelligent automobile division, as the CEO of Zhixing, and the chairman was Zhang Kai.
According to public information, according to the data released by Zhixing in 2021, by the end of 2021, the company has completed hundreds of millions of yuan in revenue, and the team expects that in 2022, the passenger car auxiliary driving project will increase by 7 times, and the low-speed unmanned logistics vehicle project will increase by 3 times. The intelligent driving system plans to land 34 models of Great Wall Motor by the end of 2022, and the total number of passenger cars installed in the next three years will exceed 1 million. In addition to Zhixing, Great Wall Motors has also expanded its intelligent driving ecosystem and signed strategic cooperation agreements with Huawei and Qualcomm in 2021.
From the overall situation, whether it is Hive Energy or The Wisdom of the End, there is still a long way to go to achieve full marketization.
Since this year, Great Wall Motors has begun to implement the rotating president system, and the first rotating president Meng Xiangjun was born in 1979, which is considered to be the embodiment of Great Wall Motor's use of young executives.
With the end of the era of "Wei Jianjun + Wang Fengying" partnership, Wei Jianjun needs companions on the road ahead.
Wei Jianjun and his Great Wall Motor Empire will go in the process of globalization