Internet companies 360 car manufacturing has made new progress!
On the evening of October 25, 360 (601360), an A-share listed company, issued an announcement that the 2.9 billion yuan investment in Hezhong New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Nezha Automobile") has fulfilled the procedures required by the relevant government authorities, and the relevant agreements for this investment have been signed.
This means that 360's shareholding in Nezha Automobile has obtained the permission of the relevant government authorities, and 360 can finally let go of its arms and boldly "build a car". However, unlike giants such as Xiaomi and Baidu, who have a lot of money, they personally built cars, and 360 chose to invest in new car-making forces in the form of strategic shares, and the financial pressure will be relatively small.
According to the official website data, in September this year, the delivery volume of Nezha cars reached 7699 units, an increase of 281% year-on-year, an increase of 16.4% month-on-month, and the single-month delivery volume ranked among the top three new car-making forces, and set a record delivery volume for 8 consecutive months; from January to September, the cumulative delivery of 41427 units, an increase of 425% year-on-year. As of the end of September, the cumulative delivery volume of Nezha Automobile was 67,730 units.
Some research institutions pointed out that as a leading enterprise in the field of domestic network security, 360 has in-depth strategic cooperation with Nezha Automobile and is expected to seize the opportunity in the field of intelligent networked vehicle security.
360.9 billion yuan into Nezha Automobile, the relevant agreement has been signed
On the evening of October 25, 360, the company issued an announcement that the company had previously disclosed that it intended to invest a total of 2.9 billion yuan in its own funds into Nezha Automobile. Up to now, the investment has fulfilled the procedures required by the relevant government authorities, and the relevant agreements for this investment have been signed. That is to say, 360's shareholding in Nezha Automobile has obtained the permission of the relevant government authorities, and the investment agreement has been signed.
Looking back, a week ago, that is, on the evening of October 18, 360 issued an announcement that the company intends to invest 2.9 billion yuan in its own funds to invest in Nezha Automobile. After the completion of this investment, the company will indirectly hold a total of 16.594% of the equity of Nezha Automobile, becoming its second largest shareholder.
Specifically, the investment is intended to be carried out in two steps in the form of capital increase, and the two steps are mutually conditional and cannot be implemented separately.
In the first step, Chengdu Hongjing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, intends to acquire at zero consideration the right to increase the capital of the target company obtained by Nanning Minsheng, a shareholder of Nezha Automobile, in the series B financing in February 2020 but has not yet paid up the capital, and increase the capital of the target company by 900 million yuan with its own funds to obtain 10.69% of the equity.
In the second step, Tianjin Qirui and 360 Fund Management Company, wholly-owned subsidiaries of the company, intend to participate in the D1 round of financing, and a total of 2 billion yuan of their own funds are planned to increase their capital to Nezha Automobile.
After the completion of this investment, the company will indirectly hold a total of 16.5940% of the equity of Nezha Automobile, and become the second largest shareholder of Nezha Automobile in total.
For the purpose of this investment in Nezha Automobile, 360 explained that it is mainly based on the good development opportunities and market prospects of the network security and intelligent networking automotive industry. At present, Nezha Automobile is operating steadily, according to the retail sales data of new energy passenger cars of the Association of Automobiles, the delivery volume of Nezha Automobile in September 2021 exceeded 7,000 units for the first time to 7,699 units, an increase of 16.4% month-on-month (the total sales volume of 15,091 vehicles in 2020), ranking among the top three new car-making forces in September, and is one of the industry leaders.
360 said that the company's strategic investment in Nezha Automobile intends to take the security of intelligent and connected vehicles as the cornerstone to empower Nezha Automobile with its accumulation and experience in the fields of network security, intelligent hardware security, and vehicle networking security, and will rely on the follow-up in-depth strategic cooperation between the two sides to further study the safety of intelligent and connected vehicles, so as to better provide intelligent and connected vehicle safety services for car companies and industrial chain partners in the whole industry. In the future, 360 Plans and other strategic partners of Nezha Automobile will give full play to their core advantages in the aspects of vehicle networking security, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, etc., and jointly assist Nezha Automobile to continuously polish and upgrade products, so that connected vehicles can take into account OTA information security, data security, functional safety and operation safety in the process of intelligence, and create an industry benchmark for intelligent networked vehicle life cycle security solutions.
Nezha Automobile's pre-investment valuation reached 22 billion, and its sales in September surpassed that of ideal cars
It is worth noting that in the past year, the valuation of Nezha Automobile has grown rapidly, and the pre-investment valuation of Nezha Automobile in the D1 round has reached 22 billion yuan, while before February last year, the valuation of Nezha Automobile was only 3.5 billion yuan.
According to the announcement, the price of the first step of 360's capital increase (Series B valuation), according to the B round of financing completed by the target company in February 2020, the pre-investment valuation is 3.5 billion yuan, and the post-investment valuation is 7.013 billion yuan; the price of the second step of capital increase (D1 round valuation) is 22 billion yuan. 360 held the sixth meeting of the sixth board of directors on October 15, and has deliberated and passed the proposal on investing in Nezha Automobile.
The company participated in the D1 round of investment of Nezha Automobile, not only 3601, except for the leading investor Tianjin Qirui and 360 Fund Management Company. Investors also include: CCB International Capital Management (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., Guangzhou Jifu Qiming Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership), Yangtze River Delta (Hefei) Digital Economy Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), Hangzhou Fan'en Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), Jilin Zhishun New Energy System Co., Ltd., CITIC Securities Investment Co., Ltd., Shanghai Puke Xinneng Private Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), Shenwan Hongyuan Hong Kong New Energy Industry Fund.
According to the data of Tianyancha APP, Nezha Automobile's parent company, Hezhong New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd., was founded on October 10, 2014, which was established in the same year as Weilai Automobile and Xiaopeng Automobile. In April 2017, the company obtained the vehicle production qualification approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, and in November 2018, the company's first mass-produced model, the Nezha N01, went on sale. At present, Nezha Automobile has three models: Nezha U PRO (priced from 99,800), listed on March 21, 2020; Nezha V (priced from 59,900), listed on November 3, 2020; and Nezha S (not yet announced price), which will be listed at the end of 2022.
From the sales point of view, in 2020, the sales volume of Nezha automobiles is not large, and the annual sales volume is only 15,091 vehicles. However, since 2021, Nezha's sales have begun to soar, with sales of 2195 units in January, 2002 in February, 3246 in March, 4015 in April, 4508 in May, 5138 in June, 6011 in July, and 6613 in August; 7699 units in September, with single-month deliveries surpassing ideal cars, ranking third among new car-making forces, and setting a record for deliveries for 8 consecutive months.
From January to September, Nezha Automobile delivered a total of 41,427 units, an increase of 425% year-on-year. By the end of September, Nezha Automobile had delivered a total of 67,730 new cars.
The latest data show that in 2020, Nezha Automobile's revenue was 1.29 billion yuan and net profit loss was 1.321 billion; in the first half of 2021, Nezha Automobile's revenue was 1.632 billion yuan and its net profit loss was 693 million yuan. In terms of other new car-making forces, in the first half of this year, WEILAI Automobile's revenue was 16.4 billion yuan, with a loss of 1.038 billion yuan; Xiaopeng Automobile's revenue was 6.712 billion yuan, a loss of 1.981 billion yuan; and ideal automobile revenue was 8.614 billion yuan, with a loss of 595 million yuan.
On August 25 this year, Nezha Automobile signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement with Huawei, and Daniel Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Nezha Automobile, and Wang Jun, president of Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, signed cooperation agreements on behalf of both companies.
According to the agreement, Nezha Automobile and Huawei will carry out comprehensive cooperation in the fields of intelligent networking, in-vehicle computing, intelligent driving, digital energy, and cloud services based on key technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and big data informatization. As the first model of the cooperation between the two parties, the Nezha S, which will be launched next year, will apply Huawei's MDC intelligent driving calculation platform and lidar technology to deeply focus on the new intelligent driving ecology.
Zhou Hongyi: 360 investment in car manufacturing is not a disorderly expansion of capital
Why invest in Nezha Automobile? Zhou Hongyi, the actual controller of 360, once said that the replacement of traditional fuel vehicles by new energy vehicles is a complete subversion and revolution, which contains huge opportunities. When China's manufacturing industry is undergoing digital transformation and upgrading, there are originally many gaps with the German and American systems, because of the battery technology, many gaps have disappeared, and the development of new energy vehicles has given China's manufacturing industry an opportunity to overtake in a corner.
Zhou Hongyi said that smart cars will be the largest intelligent terminals in our lives, and it will undoubtedly become one of the largest Internet entrances. In the future, the intelligent cars on the street need to be networked, which has network security risks, for 360 that focuses on security, this is undoubtedly a huge opportunity and challenge, the future 360 will be based on Nezha car to verify the car safety system, the future will cooperate with more car companies to ensure the security of more car companies.
Zhou Hongyi pointed out that the fourth industrial revolution is the advent of digitalization, but also the second half of the Internet, the field of car manufacturing is like a crown jewel, is a very challenging market. Good bubbles are better than no bubbles. The bubble means that there is more talent investment, but after the selection of the market, although there are losers, it will greatly accelerate the development of the industry. "Therefore, in my opinion, Internet companies have entered the market to build cars, not more, but less!"
Zhou Hongyi said that the Internet industry car manufacturing is mistaken for independent car manufacturing, but in fact it needs to learn to cooperate and jointly build cars. Without the ability of traditional car building, there is no way to make a good car, there is no convenient Internet technology, there is no way to make a good new energy intelligent car. Using Internet technology to empower traditional car-making, when the two parties are genetically recombined, they can collide with subversive automotive products. "We and Nezha jointly build cars, will not do luxury cars, we hope to use the power of science and technology, to do the people can afford the smart car, at the same time in terms of performance, experience, safety is not inferior to the price of several times higher than the car."
At the 2021 World Internet Conference Entrepreneur Summit Forum held on September 26 this year, Zhou Hongyi said, "360 investment in car manufacturing is not a disorderly expansion of capital, but to empower technology, talents, funds and digital genes to the automobile manufacturing industry, produce 'chemical reactions' and 'chain reactions', and create a new benchmark for intelligent and connected vehicles." ”
Zhou Hongyi said that if Chinese Internet companies can export digital technology to traditional car companies, then China's auto industry will have great digital and intelligent advantages in the future when facing the auto industry in the United States, Japan and Europe.