On January 2, Xpeng Motors-W (09868) closed down 0.53%, interrupting the rebound momentum of the previous two trading days. In the next two trading days, the company's stock price failed to keep the HK$60 mark, and went all the way down to HK$50. As of January 4, the share price of Xpeng Motors fell below HK$55 again.
In fact, since the intraday stock price reached a stage high of HK$74.3 on November 24 last year, the share price of Xpeng Motors has been falling endlessly. On December 28, the company's share price fell to HK$52.5, a decline of nearly 30%. Although the intraday stock price fell significantly on the 28th, Xpeng Motors finally closed up and ended the 2023 Hong Kong market trading with a rise of 4.42% the next day.
After the Hong Kong stock market on January 2 this year, Xpeng Motors announced its delivery data for December 2023 and Q4 quarter. However, secondary market investors did not buy its monthly delivery record and the cumulative delivery record of 400,000 vehicles. From January 3rd to 5th, the share price of Xpeng Motors continued to decline, closing down 4.09% on January 5.
Look at sales or profit?
When it comes to the "new car-making forces" in China, both the industry and investors like to make horizontal comparisons of the three "Wei Xiaoli", but by 2024, the development pattern of the new forces has undergone drastic changes, and Xiaopeng seems to have been left far behind.
At the same time as Xpeng announced on January 2 that it disclosed its delivery data for December 2023 and Q4, Ideal and NIO also disclosed relevant data at the same time.
According to the data, in December 2023, Xpeng Motors delivered a total of 20,115 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 78%, and set a new monthly delivery record; After achieving continuous growth in deliveries for three consecutive months, in the fourth quarter of 2023, Xpeng delivered a total of 60,158 vehicles, exceeding 60,000 units for the first time in the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 171%; In addition, Xpeng Motors delivered 141601 vehicles in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 17%. As of 2023, the cumulative deliveries of Xpeng Motors will exceed 400,000 for the first time in history, reaching 400311 units.
NIO delivered a total of 160038 new vehicles in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 30.7%, ranking second in the delivery ranking of new EV manufacturers.
Compared with the above two, the delivery of Li Auto has reached a new level. According to the data, in December 2023, Li Auto delivered 50,353 new vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 137.1%, reaching the monthly delivery target of 50,000 vehicles; For the whole year of 2023, Ideal delivered a total of 376,030 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 182.2%. It is not difficult to see that the ideal single-year delivery volume in 2023 has almost caught up with the cumulative delivery volume of Xpeng, and the gap between the two is self-evident.
And the gap between the two in business is naturally transmitted to the financial aspect. Taking the latest 2023 Q3 financial report as an example, Li Auto's current revenue was 34.68 billion yuan, an increase of 271.2% year-on-year and 21.0% month-on-month; The ideal net profit was 2.81 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year turnaround, an increase of 21.8% month-on-month. In terms of gross profit margin, the overall gross profit margin of Li Auto in the third quarter of 2023 was 22.0%, exceeding Tesla's gross profit margin of 17.9% in the same period; The ideal current cash reserve reached 88.52 billion yuan.
In terms of Xiaopeng, due to the gap in business performance, Xiaopeng's revenue and profit are inferior to ideal, but from a longitudinal point of view, Xiaopeng's finance is actually mixed as a whole.
According to Zhitong Financial APP, in the third quarter of 2023, Xpeng Motors' revenue was 8.53 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25% and a month-on-month increase of 68.5%; However, its net loss for the current period was 3.89 billion yuan, and the adjusted net loss was 2.79 billion yuan, an increase of 26% year-on-year and 5% month-on-month. In fact, in the Q3 quarter, it can be seen that Xpeng has carried out an active cost control strategy. The company's current R&D expenditure was 1.31 billion yuan, down 12.9% year-on-year and 4.5% month-on-month; Selling and administrative expenses increased 4% year-on-year and 9.6% sequentially.
However, due to the decline in the gross profit margin of Xiaopeng's vehicles, it is difficult to help the company turn around its losses in the short term, even if it actively controls expenses. According to the data, in the third quarter, the gross profit margin of Xpeng Motors was -6.1%, a year-on-year decrease of 17.7 percentage points and a month-on-month increase of 2.5 percentage points.
However, from the perspective of cash flow, thanks to Volkswagen's investment, as of the third quarter of 2023, Xpeng held cash reserves of 36.4 billion yuan, and even after deducting interest-bearing borrowings, the net cash reached 25.1 billion yuan, and achieved positive free cash flow of more than 1 billion yuan in the current period.
It can be seen that although the gross profit margin of the vehicle is currently negative and the loss is still the same, whether it is revenue, gross profit margin or cash flow in Q3 quarter, there is a quarter-on-quarter growth, indicating that the company is coming out of the trough. It is worth mentioning that after the Q3 financial report, He Xiaopeng set a very positive goal for the company's expectations for the fourth quarter: delivery of more than 60,000; At the same time, the company also raised its performance guidance, and the total quarterly revenue will reach 12.7-13.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 147.1%-164.6%.
Although the 2023Q4 financial report has not yet been disclosed, judging from the delivery data that has been released, Xpeng has indeed reached the target of 60,000 deliveries. It also makes the market less pessimistic about the company's subsequent financial reports.
Will the mid-to-high-end MPV track be the direction of breakthrough?
On January 1 this year, Xpeng Motors' first MPV, Xpeng X9, was launched on the market with a "low price" starting at 359,800, becoming the "first catfish" in the domestic mid-to-high-end MPV track in 2024.
Until October 2022, the MPVs of the United States and Japan still occupy 60% of the market share. Take the star model Toyota Alpha as an example, which has been hard to find since it entered the Chinese market in 2008, and consumers usually need to increase the price by hundreds of thousands of yuan to buy it. According to public information, there are two models of the 2024 fuel version of Alpha, and the prices of the domestic official channels are 899,000 yuan and 909,000 yuan respectively.
In recent years, domestic new energy MPVs have begun to become popular in the market, but they are almost taking the mid-to-high-end route. Taking the Denza D9, the best-selling MPV market in China in 2023, as an example, its average transaction price also exceeded 420,000. In this context, Xiaopeng X9's main "cost performance" will push the starting price to 359,800 yuan, which is undoubtedly an impact and involution signal for the current mid-to-high-end MPV market.
The reason why Xpeng also dares to play "cost-effective" in the MPV track lies in the success of this strategy in the SUV market. Xpeng's current hot-selling model Xpeng G6 has been known for its "cost performance" since its launch, and it has continued to improve cost performance through price reductions in less than half a year after it was listed, and even announced a time-limited reduction of 10,000 yuan for the whole series in December 2023, and the starting price has dropped to 199,900 yuan. Although the gross profit margin of Xpeng bicycles is currently negative, judging from the subsequent Q4 delivery growth, the price-for-volume strategy is in line with the current car purchase trend in the domestic new energy vehicle demand market.
And from the perspective of market increment, the domestic MPV market that expands against the trend also provides the survival soil for this strategy.
Compared with 2017-2022, the domestic MPV market has shrunk year after year, with an average annual decline of more than 15%, and 2023 will undoubtedly be the year of the MPV market turnover. According to the latest data from the Passenger Car Association, from January to November 2023, the cumulative sales of narrow passenger cars in the country will be 19.345 million units, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%. Among them, the cumulative sales volume of the MPV market was 993,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 17.8%.
During the same period, the cumulative wholesale volume of MPV models in China reached 983,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 17.4%. Among them, the performance of new energy MPVs is outstanding, with wholesale volume about 2.5 times that of the same period last year, making the new energy penetration rate of this category soar to 19.6%, an increase of 11.9% over the whole year of 2022, and the growth rate far exceeds that of sedans and SUVs.
Although there are environmental factors such as consumption upgrades and multi-child policies in the counterattack of MPVs, it is the domestic new energy vehicle companies that really pull the trigger. From this point of view, the emergence of Xpeng X9 is just stepping on the wind.
On the other hand, although the X9, which starts at 350,000 yuan, can be called a "catfish" in the current MPV track, its overall price still exceeds that of Xpeng's other product lines. In this regard, Xpeng Motors said that Xpeng X9 is the product with the highest gross profit margin in the current product portfolio, which is expected to promote the improvement of profitability. "The guidance still maintains a positive gross margin in the fourth quarter. Xpeng Motors said in its financial report that thanks to the company's continuous cost reduction and the arrival of new products on the Xpeng X9 and 2.0 platforms, it is expected that the gross profit margin in 2024 will be significantly higher than that in 2023.
However, there is still a question mark over whether the mid-to-high-end MPV will help Xpeng achieve a reversal of the dilemma. On the one hand, despite the strong growth momentum of the MPV market, the total sales in the first 11 months of 2023 are still less than sedans and SUVs, which is a niche market. On the other hand, the new energy MPV track where Xpeng X9 is located is also full of competing products, and the top four new product contributions in 2023 are Denza D9, Grevia, Buick Century and Geely Zeekr, all of which are positioned in the high-end luxury MPV market, and represent the four technical route products of PHEV, HEV, ICE and BEV respectively.
In addition, in terms of X9 production capacity, Xpeng's previous plan was to sell 3,000 vehicles per month, and it seems that it is still unknown how much impact this production and sales level will have on Xpeng's profit level in the future.