The new forces of car manufacturing welcomed the "black opening", and the worst car companies only sold 37 vehicles a day

Text | Yang Wanli

In 2023, cold ice will still hang above the heads of new car-making forces.

Recently, a number of new automakers have successively disclosed sales data for January, and four car companies, Li Auto, NIO, Xpeng Motors, and Leap Auto, have all experienced month-on-month declines. In terms of year-on-year growth, except for the positive growth of Li Auto, the remaining three companies have negative growth.

The year-on-year growth rate fell more by Xpeng Motors and Leap Auto, the latter selling only 1,139 vehicles a month, with an average daily sales of 36.7 vehicles.

Why did the new forces of car manufacturing encounter the "black opening"?

On the one hand, it is affected by factors such as the ebb of new energy subsidies, price cuts by car companies, and consumers waiting and seeing. On the other hand, the increasing number of new energy car brands and the increase in consumer options have gradually reduced the "scarcity" value of new automakers.

From the perspective of capital market performance, since the stock price of Xinneng Car exploded in 2020, it quickly entered the bear market stage. The shares of the "new force three musketeers" NIO and Xpeng Motors fell more than 79% from their highs, and Li Auto fell by more than 30%. Leapmotor broke on the first day of listing in Hong Kong and has not yet returned to the issue price.

January encountered a "black opening"

In 2022, "Wei Xiaoli" failed to achieve the sales target set at the beginning of 2022. In detail, the sales target completion rates of NIO, Li Auto and Xpeng Motors were 81.6%, 78.35% and 48.28% respectively. In addition, the completion rate of Leap Motor's sales target was 92.58%, which was almost achieved.

After entering 2023, the outside world has maintained attention to the sales momentum of new automakers, but from the data, it still does not perform well.

In January, Li Auto sold 15,141 units (average daily sales of 488.4 units), up 23.4% year-on-year and down 28.69% month-on-month.

Among the above four emerging automakers, only Li Auto's sales exceeded 10,000 and the year-on-year growth rate was positive, while the remaining three sold less than 10,000 units, and the year-on-year and month-on-month growth rates were negative.

In January, NIO sold 8,506 units (average daily sales of 274.38 units), down 11.87% year-on-year and 46.2% month-on-month. Xpeng Motors' sales volume was 5,218 units (average daily sales of 168.32 units), down 60% year-on-year and 54.6% month-on-month. Leap car sales were 1,139 units (average daily sales were 36.7 units), down 85.9% year-on-year and 86.59% month-on-month.

Ideal car sales are stronger than the other three new car-making forces, the outside world believes that the main extended-range electric vehicles match the current market demand, and the other is to grasp the market rhythm and model relay better.

Xpeng's glory stopped in the first half of 2022. At that time, Xpeng Motors was the number one sales force among new automakers, and from the second half of 2022, its sales figures gradually fell behind.

In the past, Xpeng's soaring car sales were largely due to the P7's hot sales. However, after the launch of the newly launched G9, the management of Xpeng Motors carried out a drastic reform, that is, announced a comprehensive organizational restructuring.

At the end of January this year, Wang Fengying, former general manager of Great Wall Motor, joined Xpeng Motors as president. Whether she can reverse Xpeng's sluggish sales remains to be seen.

The most unexpected this time was the Leap Car, and in the past period, with the price of the boutique car T03, the company's sales rose rapidly.

However, after entering 2023, the disclosed sales data can be described as the "worst". Leapmotor sold less than 40 vehicles a day on average in January, making it the only automaker among the four emerging automakers to sell less than 100 vehicles.

On the whole, the month-on-month sales of the four car companies of Lili, NIO, Xpeng and Leap are all declining, which to a certain extent indicates that the development momentum of the new forces of car manufacturing is weak.

Some people believe that with the withdrawal of new energy vehicle subsidies, some car companies have prompted consumers to buy in advance; There is also a view that after Tesla announced the price cut, some domestic manufacturers are following suit, and it is not ruled out that some consumers choose to hold the currency and wait and see.

As one of the largest consumer markets for new energy vehicles, China's new energy brands are blooming, and consumers' selectivity has increased significantly. As a result, there are more and more competitors from new automakers, and their own "scarcity" value is decreasing.

The report pointed out that "the growth of new energy sales has reached a bottleneck stage.... [In the future] sales growth will be a serious problem."

So the question is, how high is the investment value of the new forces of car manufacturing?

Are the new forces of car manufacturing still fragrant?

If you reinvest in new forces in 2019 and 2020, there is a high probability that you will make a profit; If you enter again after 2021, there is a good chance that you will lose money.

Data show that NIO has fallen by 79.46% from its high point to now; Xpeng Motors has fallen by 79.35% from its high point to now; Li Auto has fallen 30.9% from its high point so far. Leapmotor broke through immediately after its listing on the Hong Kong stock market, and the current share price fell by 40.6% from the issue price.

The stock price is a weighing machine. At present, the new energy automobile industry has entered the era of "two super and many strong", the two super giants are BYD and Tesla, and the duoqiang is the old car company brands (Changan, Great Wall, Geely, etc.), Internet and technology giants (Xiaomi, Huawei, etc.).

Traditional car companies are transforming to new energy, relying on traditional technology, market and capital to form their own advantages; Internet and technology giants choose to build cars jointly or separately, they have abundant cash flow and technological attributes.

Unlike other players, the emerging automakers have a distinctive feature, that is, their performance continues to lose. The reasons for the difficulty in turning around the performance are the price increase of upstream raw materials, sales and R&D expenses continue to invest.

At the beginning of this year, the "price butcher" Tesla cut prices again, further intensifying the pressure on new forces in car manufacturing.

On January 6, 2023, Tesla Model 3 and Model Y ushered in price adjustment, with a maximum price reduction of 48,000 yuan, a record low.

One of the reasons for Tesla's price reduction is that the company itself is more profitable. The data shows that as of the end of 2022, the company's gross profit margin was 25.6%, and the net profit margin of sales was 15.45%,

Subsequently, domestic automakers Qianjie and Wuling Hongguang successively announced that they would reduce the price of vehicles.

Can the new forces of car manufacturing follow? This is a paradoxical question.

If new automakers reduce prices to gain sales, the road to turning a profit may be extended. If you don't follow the price cut, it may have an impact on sales. Further, if there is no equivalent sales volume to cover operating costs, new automakers will also fall into the quagmire of losses.

Therefore, for the new automakers who continue to lose money, they need to find ways to expand sales. From an investment point of view, which new automaker has outstanding sales, narrowed performance losses or faster profits, may be more likely to be sought after by funds.

One direction for the development of new automakers is to impact the mid-to-high-end fields with higher gross margins.

New second-tier automakers such as Nezha and Leap have seen the surge in sales in the past two years mainly supported by low-end and low-end electric vehicles. Once Tesla and other car companies continue to reduce prices, there is also great uncertainty about whether consumers will continue to favor ZeroSport.

In the face of the embarrassing new forces of car manufacturing, are you still optimistic?