Image source@Visual China
文 | 锌财经，作者 | 路世明，编辑 | 大风
Recently, Nenglian Zhidian and Shenlan Automobile have reached a cooperation, and the two sides have carried out in-depth cooperation in many aspects such as improving the layout of the charging network, improving the utilization rate of charging piles, and optimizing the energy supplement solutions for multiple scenarios, so as to create a convenient and high-quality one-stop charging service experience for new energy vehicle owners and jointly build a new energy charging service network.
Deep Blue is not the first car company to cooperate with Nenglian Zhidian, including Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Wenjie, Zeekr, Lantu, Jihu, Gaohe, Karry New Energy and other new energy car companies, all of which have reached charging service cooperation with Nenglian Zhidian.
The "circle of friends" of car companies is getting bigger and bigger, but this is a "helpless move" of Nenglian Zhidian.
As a third-party charging service platform, Nenglian Zhidian's business has been seriously affected after its fast electricity was abandoned by head charging pile operators such as Telai this year. In order to maintain business operations, Nenglian Zhidian has to turn to car companies with weak "voice" in the charging market.
Obviously, Nenglian Zhidian's new measures have not attracted the attention of capital, and its secondary market performance is still a mess in the face of the core problem of "heavy marketing and light research and development". Even if Q3 2023 delivered a fairly good financial report, it could not save it from fire and water.
As a last resort, Nenglian Zhidian had no choice but to readjust its business focus, move its attention to the broader "energy" industry in the market, and participate in the market as a "solution provider". However, under the fact of "weak technical strength", the new business of Nenglian Zhidian is not easy to do.
Continued losses, stock prices plummeted
In recent years, driven by the support of national policies, continuous technological upgrading and market demand, the new energy vehicle industry in mainland China has developed rapidly.
Under the good trend, consumers are generally facing battery life anxiety. As an important way to replenish energy, the charging pile market has risen rapidly and shown huge market potential, attracting capital and entrepreneurs from all walks of life.
It can be seen that a number of related enterprises have also been achieved under the tuyere, and Nenglian Zhidian is one of them.
As one of the market participants, Nenglian Zhidian entered the market through its subsidiary company Kuaidian, and rose rapidly with the help of Internet platform enterprise thinking, and officially landed on NASDAQ through "backdoor" on June 11, 2022, with the stock code "NAAS", becoming "China's first charging service stock".
Standing on the wind, pigs can fly, but pigs will always be pigs, and even if they fly to the sky, they will not be loved by capital. After all, once the wind changes, the pig without wings will only fall miserably.
For a long time, the problem of Nenglian Zhidian has been very prominent, that is, focusing on marketing and ignoring research and development.
In 2023, Nenglian Zhidian's marketing expenses in the first quarter will be 66.4 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50%. In the second quarter, it was 86.1 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 48%. In the third quarter, it soared to $161 million, which is comparable to the amount of marketing expenses for the whole of 2021. In addition, marketing expenses in the first three quarters of 2023 reached 310 million yuan, exceeding the whole year of 2022.
Among them, the "humor" lies in the fact that the 161 million marketing expenses of Nenglian Zhidian in the third quarter only brought it a gross profit of 46.828 million yuan.
A "platform-based" enterprise like Nenglian Zhidian, or an "intermediary-type" enterprise, is actually a way of thinking in the early stage of development. However, after getting through the initial stage of development, the company must have a good ability to undertake business, otherwise it will be a platform in the air.
In the secondary market, enterprises without core technology are naturally not favored by capital for a long time. The key is that Nenglian Zhidian not only has no technology, but also has been in a state of loss for a long time, and the loss has shown a trend of rapid expansion.
In terms of the third quarter financial report, Nenglian Zhidian's loss increased by 234.89% year-on-year, reaching a record 365 million yuan, and its loss has exceeded 210.3 million yuan in the first half of 2023 and 354 million yuan in the whole year of 2022.
Under the two labels of weak technology and continuous losses, Nenglian Zhidian began to be "forgotten" by secondary market capital.
After the successful backdoor listing, the share price performance of Nenglian Zhidian rose less and fell more, especially after April this year, its stock price fell all the way. As of December 28, Nenglian Zhidian's share price was $1.55 per share, down 87.8% from the highest point of $12.78 per share on April 6.
Source: Snowball
Three-way service, dry hands dipped in salt
The reason why the stock price of Nenglian Zhidian will fall endlessly is very related to the collapse of the market position of "fast electricity".
In August this year, Telai Call, Star Charging and Cloud Fast Charging each announced that they would jointly build a high-quality and stable charging Internet network, and removed about 70% of the charging piles of fast electricity.
At the end of 2022, the number of charging piles of the top 5 operators in the number of charging operators in the country accounted for 69.8% of the total. Among them, the top two operators are special calls and star charging, accounting for 20.19% and 19.07% of the market share.
The inducement for the head operator to completely tear off the skin of Kuaidian is an activity of Kuaidian's launch. According to media reports, starting from 0:00 on August 16 this year, Kuaidian has successively launched the activity of charging VIP customers with 0 service fees in many cities.
The charging fee for new energy vehicle owners is divided into two parts, one is the electricity fee paid directly to the power grid, and the other is the service fee to the charging station. Charging operators rely heavily on service fees for their revenues. The service fee is 0 yuan, which means that the charging station operator has to sacrifice the only profit in exchange for the traffic of the fast electric APP.
APP treats, operators pay, this aggregation platform's favorite routine, invalid here in Kuaidian.
No one wants to dilute their profits to achieve others, especially the head players like Telai, whose gross profit is relatively low, and they have been in a state of loss, and they have to be publicly "taken advantage", which no one can "stand it".
Interestingly, after the quarrel between Kuaidian and the head operator, the Sichuan Automobile Industry Alliance also issued a "Proposal on Resisting Vicious Competition and Promoting the High-quality Development of the Charging Industry".
The proposal directly stated: "A third-party charging traffic aggregation enterprise in China has given high or full subsidies to some charging companies in our city for charging service fees, resulting in a significant reduction or even zero of charging service fees in our city, and a trend of vicious competition in the market." ”
There's a saying after the break, "Dry fingers dipped in salt – no money." It means that when you don't have the capital, you want to get benefits. The business model of fast electricity is most appropriately explained by this sentence.
To put it bluntly, the essence of Kuaidian's business is intermediary services, although there is nothing wrong with this, and many large enterprises are also in this model, but the problem is that Kuaidian has not grasped the "degree".
It is clear that using other people's money to make your own plate bigger, such a clumsy "activity" is actually incomprehensible.
With the loss of large customers and a large number of orders, the future of Kuaidi is confusing, and the parent company Nenglian Zhidian has also suffered a heavy blow. In the third quarter, the proportion of Nenglian Zhidian's charging service segment in a single quarter revenue plummeted to 18.43%.
Changing lanes of energy, lack of stamina
The change of market outlets and the sudden changes in the charging business have forced Nenglian Zhidian to think about a new development direction.
In its third-quarter financial report, it can be found that the main business of Nenglian Zhidian has changed from the original online, offline and innovative business to three categories: charging services, energy solutions and new businesses. Among them, the revenue of energy solutions segments such as intelligent equipment manufacturing business (EPC) and energy storage business reached 139 million yuan in the quarter, accounting for 81.2% of the revenue.
Source: Nenglian Zhidian's financial report
The changes and data on the business side mean that Nenglian Zhidian has transformed from a third-party platform to an energy asset operator, and it also fully shows that offline energy solutions have become the main source of revenue for Nenglian Zhidian.
In fact, the operation of energy assets is not a decision made by Nenglian Zhidian with a pat on the head.
As early as June this year, before Kuaidi was "cut off", Nenglian Zhidian acquired Hong Kong Optoelectronics through its subsidiary, which focuses on housing estates and industrial and commercial rooftop solar projects, and has developed and built a total of 25MW distributed solar energy projects, and currently has more than 600 solar projects under construction in Hong Kong.
Whether it is the construction and operation of charging infrastructure, or industrial and commercial energy storage in multiple scenarios such as charging stations, or even the upgrading of optical storage and charging, and microgrids, the prospects of the entire market can be said to be very broad.
However, from the perspective of Nenglian Zhidian, this "good" business still faces severe challenges.
The first is the technical issue. As mentioned earlier, Nenglian Zhidian has long focused on marketing and light research and development, and the EPC business is a contracting business, which is like building a building, but the quality of Nenglian Zhidian's "building" needs to be put a question mark. At the same time, it is even more questionable how much Party A is willing to contract the project to Nenglian Zhidian.
The second is the energy storage business. Energy storage has shown explosive growth in the past two years, but looking at domestic energy storage companies, most of them are in a state of "increasing revenue but not increasing profits", and there are very few companies that can really make profits. Especially this year, energy storage companies are generally facing the problems of production capacity process, inventory backlog, and price decline.
In such a situation, Nenglian Zhidian also has to face a number of industry giants, such as CATL, Tesla and other companies, whether it is technical strength or financial strength, it is the existence of crushing Nenglian Zhidian.
Taking a step back, even if Nenglian Zhidian has the technical strength and can find more customers, it may not have the "funds" to complete the project, after all, both EPC and energy storage are asset-heavy projects.
After the acquisition of Hong Kong Radio and Television, in the third quarter of this year, the asset-liability ratio of Nenglian Zhidian was still expanding compared with the previous quarter, as high as 90.58%, far exceeding the general warning line of 70%. Moreover, it has 396 million yuan in cash on its books, but more than 500 million yuan in short-term debt.
Such a cash flow state is difficult to support the "ambition" of Nenglian Zhidian.
The secondary market is declining, the status of charging services is unstable, and the prospects for new business are uncertain. Only do "link", not to talk about the technology of the energy chain intelligent electricity, people wonder how far it can go?