Demand continues to grow, enterprises expand significantly, and the new energy industry is in a "wild" era. For new energy companies, the main challenge is how to find sufficient financial support, and supply chain fintech may be the "super engine" to solve this problem.
01 Growth and uncertainty coexist
As an important emerging industry, the new energy industry has strong growth potential and is also full of unpredictable uncertainties. Among them, the financing problem is the biggest challenge at present.
In the process of rapid development and expansion of production capacity in the new energy industry, enterprises urgently need to improve their "leverage" to adapt to market growth.
▎ In the photovoltaic field, the debt ratio of the vast majority of listed companies exceeds 50%, and some even exceed 70%.
The substantial expansion of core enterprises will inevitably affect the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, resulting in suppliers facing financing problems in the rapid growth of market demand, affecting the stability of the industrial chain.
Source: Annual reports of listed companies
The fluctuation of the price of new energy raw materials also has a direct impact on the business behavior and capital demand of enterprises.
The price of lithium carbonate, the main raw material for lithium battery cathode materials, is a typical example. According to data from Shanghai Steel Union, on June 19, the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate was 315,000 yuan / ton, compared with the low of 176,500 yuan / ton in mid-to-late April this year, an increase of more than 79%. In November last year, this price soared to a record high of 600,000 yuan / ton, and then fell sharply.
The sharp fluctuation of raw material prices has seriously affected upstream and downstream enterprises. Especially when the price enters the price increase cycle, dealers often need to pay in advance for purchases, which tests the dealers' ability to raise funds and predict prices. However, because the suppliers and distributors in the industrial chain are still dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, their bargaining power in the industrial chain is weak, and they can usually only passively accept the conditions of the counterparty in terms of purchase payment and sales collection, while traditional financial products are difficult to adapt to their production expansion needs due to harsh credit conditions and small approval amounts.
In addition, because the new energy industry is still in the "spring and autumn period" of rapid development, the market pattern of some vertical fields has not yet been finally formed, the phenomenon of "small, scattered and chaotic" is seriously prominent, and the phenomenon of data islands and data faults is serious, which is not conducive to the improvement of production efficiency, nor is it conducive to the financing of upstream and downstream chain enterprises.
For example, in the "lithium battery" recycling market in the field of energy storage, the construction of recycling channels is disorderly, the small and scattered channels are serious, various types of participants have poured in, standards lack of consistency, and there are barriers between data, these factors pose challenges to the risk control of related enterprises and reduce the availability of financing for enterprises.
In the process of "soaring" in the new energy industry, the financing problems and data islands encountered by enterprises have become the biggest challenges at present. Looking at various solutions, the integrated supply chain fintech service of "digital intelligent supply chain + supply chain finance" that meets the characteristics of the new energy industry may become the optimal solution.
▎Some new energy companies have relied on "digital intelligence supply chain + supply chain finance" to walk a new path!
02 Create a new financial ecology for the new energy industry
Supply chain fintech can effectively promote the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of new energy, forming data assets that financial institutions can recognize in the process, which in turn can help these enterprises obtain the injection of credit funds from financial institutions.
Take lithium batteries as an example. In the lithium battery recycling industry, because the lithium battery industry has been in the seller's market for a long time, the bargaining power of recyclers is weak, usually need cash payment, and its payment needs to wait for battery transportation, battery inspection and other process links, the inconsistency of cargo flow and capital flow not only affects the recycling efficiency, but also makes the recycler face the dilemma of cash flow shortage, relying on traditional financing to break this deadlock is also more difficult.
The "Lithium++" digital platform created by JD.com Supply Chain Fintech and Tianqi Co., Ltd. aims at the industrial agglomeration ecology, effectively links all participants in the supply chain, realizes the loading of functions such as transaction cloud, data barrier opening, uniform standards, risk management, etc., and finally transforms industrial chain information into industrial chain data, and restores transaction scenarios based on "four-stream integration".
In the future, based on the trusted assets formed by real transaction scenarios and historical transaction records, financial institutions can "rest assured" to provide scenario-based supply chain financial services for small and medium-sized enterprises in the lithium battery recycling industry supply chain, thereby fundamentally solving the financing needs of related enterprises in the supply chain.
Source: Lithium++ platform
In the photovoltaic industry, the main development direction of new energy, supply chain fintech can also meet the financing needs of upstream and downstream suppliers and distributors in the supply chain.
At present, photovoltaic has become an important guarantee for achieving global energy transformation and green development, with huge market space. As of the end of 2022, the new installed capacity of mainland photovoltaics has ranked first in the world for 10 consecutive years, and the cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaics has also ranked first in the world for 8 consecutive years.
▎The rapid development of the industry has spawned a huge demand for industrial chain financing.
For example, because downstream dealers need to pay in full or a certain percentage of the payment when preparing goods, capital turnover efficiency is crucial to dealer income, but dealer financing has the problem of dispersion of end customers, end customers cannot confirm their rights in time, and it is difficult for dealers to rely on their own financing, and traditional financial products cannot effectively serve. Procurement financing based on supply chain fintech is a powerful tool to solve the above financing problems.
Recently, the integrated solution of JD.com's supply chain financial technology in the photovoltaic industry has landed in a large-scale photovoltaic company to help corporate dealers solve financing problems. Most of the distributors in the photovoltaic industry adopt the prepayment model, and the purchase amount is usually high, so that the distributor usually has greater financial pressure in the stage of stocking and organizing sales, and in the current rapid burst of market demand, this pressure is multiplied for dealers.
In the face of the financing problems encountered by distributors' module procurement, photovoltaic companies adopt JD.com's supply chain financial technology solution to introduce procurement financing products, and the single-family credit line can be as high as 50 million yuan, effectively solving the financing problems of dealers in the stage of stocking and purchasing.
With the rapid development of the new energy industry, JD Supply Chain Fintech has provided a strong boost for the sustainable development of new energy enterprises through mature scientific and technological capabilities, financial service capabilities and scenario-based capabilities.
Supply chain fintech also solves the financing problems faced by new energy enterprises by promoting the digital transformation of upstream and downstream SMEs in the new energy industry chain, so as to create a new ecology of industrial finance.