In the past four months of this year, the car circle has been bustling, but there is a lack of NIO's voice.
However, Li Bin is very busy, either appearing at the new car launch of other car companies, broadcasting live with Lei Jun, He Xiaopeng and other opponents, and recently he was also invited to the Harvard Forum, praising the opening of China's new energy vehicle market is conducive to the development of the industry.
Everyone knows that NIO continues to suffer huge losses, and at the same time, due to the inability of sales volume to support the scale effect, NIO's gross profit margin is not high, making it even more distant to turn losses into profits.
According to NIO's 2023 full-year financial report released in March, NIO's full-year net loss in 2023 further widened to 21.147 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43.5%.
According to the amount of NIO's losses, the financing of about 2.2 billion US dollars (about 15 billion yuan) brought by the Middle East tycoon Abu Dhabi (CYVN) at the end of last year only filled the "loophole" of NIO in the first three quarters.
Therefore, some analysts believe that "Li Bin's trip to the United States is not only to be a guest speaker, but also to find the next round of life extension money for NIO." 」
#01 Clearance and runaway
NIO has never lacked controversy, and even the words "Li Bin" and "the worst man" always appear in the title of an article at the same time, but this never affects the fact that Li Bin can always save NIO from the "brink of bankruptcy" at every critical moment.
In 2019, when it was only a few tenths of a millimeter away from bankruptcy, NIO launched the "Lifetime Free Battery Replacement" to stabilize sales, and soon received an equity investment of 7 billion yuan from the Hefei government.
Jokingly, Weilai's battery swap and Li Bin's ability to find money can be regarded as the same moat for Weilai.
But assuming that the current NIO is in dire straits, the fastest running must be capital.
On April 4, Baillie Gifford, known for its long-term investments in Amazon, Tesla, and others, filed a statement on changes in equity with the SEC:
In the first quarter of this year, Baiji Capital reduced its holdings of nearly 100 million shares of NIO, from 115 million shares (5.5% of NIO's total share capital) to 18.91 million shares, a reduction of 83%.
Basically, it can be seen as a liquidation reduction.
This reduction was also verified in NIO's 2023 annual report, where there is indeed no Baiji among the major shareholders listed - the management holds 9.5% of the shares, Tencent holds 5.9% of the shares, and the new shareholder is the Middle East tyrant Abu Dhabi, with a 20.1% stake.
Baiji Capital is an "old friend" of NIO, which started to act as early as 2018 when NIO went public, did not sell off in 2019, the most difficult year for NIO, and maintained a large number of holdings until the beginning of this year.
It is said that it was Alibaba that recommended NIO to Baiji, perhaps because Ma Yun thought that Baiji Capital's "patience" was just in line with Li Bin's "long-termism".
At present, NIO's stock price is only $4 (April 19), down 93% from its peak of $60, and Baiji can't bear it anymore.
#02 Entry and Entry
After all, NIO's ability to make money is not good, but its ability to spend money is obvious to all.
A person familiar with the matter said that at the senior management meeting of NIO in the fourth quarter of 2019, Tencent's investor representatives issued a "time limit" to NIO's management - "within two months, either solve the problem of money or control the expenses." 」
From 2018 to 2023, NIO's annual cash flow from operating activities will be -7.9 billion yuan, -8.7 billion yuan, 2 billion yuan, 2 billion yuan, -3.9 billion yuan, and -1.4 billion yuan, respectively.
With the exception of 2020 and 2021, which were positive, the remaining years were negative in cash flow.
Selling cars and mobile phones is not profitable, and NIO's method of controlling costs is to focus on manufacturing.
In December 2023, NIO acquired the assets of two JAC factories for 3.16 billion yuan and entered into a manufacturing technology service agreement, under which JAC will provide technical support services.
Li Bin said that if it can be completely in-house, the manufacturing cost will be reduced by 10%, but it is also quite difficult to build the car itself, which requires NIO to manage the supply chain more carefully.
From the perspective of gross profit margin, the overall gross profit margin of Ideal and Xiaopeng is higher than that of the automobile business, but the overall gross profit margin of NIO, which adopts the battery swap model, is lower than that of the automobile business, which is related to its large-scale laying of the battery swap network.
Despite the mattress, NIO continues to build charging and swapping stations on a large scale – adding 1,000 battery swap stations and 20,000 charging piles in 2024, more than one-third of the number added in the past 10 years combined.
Up to now, NIO has built 3,767 charging stations and 21,912 charging piles across the country, making it the car brand with the largest number of charging piles in China.
However, due to the fact that sales cannot keep up with the construction of charging and swapping, the more NIO charging stations are built, all of them are used by friends.
Under the goal of reducing costs and improving efficiency, NIO has postponed or suspended some businesses, for example, the battery business is still in-house R&D, but the production is entrusted to the outside world, and the overseas business is also suspended, according to Li Bin's words, "first run the five countries that Europe has invested in", and forget the original plan of 25 countries in 2025.
In addition, according to a report by foreign media EV on April 11, against the backdrop of market pressure and declining sales, NIO has been discussing a second round of layoffs, but it is currently uncertain about the scope or specific terms of the layoffs.
If the news is true, this will be the second round of layoffs that NIO has made in the short term after that round of layoffs last December.
#03 Keep your job
In the first quarter of 2024, NIO sold 30,053 units, with monthly sales of around 10,000 units, down 3.18% from the same period last year.
NIO's last new car, the ET5T, has been tepid since its release in June last year, with only 16,077 units sold in just over half a year.
Another ET9, released in December last year, is positioned as an executive flagship, benchmarking the Maybach S-Class and BMW 7 Series, with a pre-sale price of 800,000 yuan, but it will not be delivered until 2025.
Previously, Li Bin said, "If NIO still sells 10,000 per month in the future, Qin Lihong and I (co-founder of NIO) will go out to find jobs." 」
In order to keep his job as CEO, Li Bin put his hopes of increasing sales on the new brand "Ledao".
According to a spy photo of the L60, which is rumored to be Ledao's first model, the L60 is positioned as a mid-size/mid-to-large coupe SUV, with split headlights at the front and hidden door handles, and a tail shape that is quite different from the existing NIO model.
In terms of power, the L60 will be built on NIO's NT3.0 platform, with two battery versions planned to be launched in 60kWh and 90kWh.
Most importantly, it supports battery swapping.
Under the premise of also supporting battery swapping, in order to distinguish it from the main brand, Ledao will distinguish it in the configuration of intelligent driving hardware.
In terms of price, according to Li Bin's previous statement that "the cost of the first model will be 10% lower than that of the Model Y", the cost of the L60 is expected to be around 200,000 yuan.
Li Bin said that the brand name of Ledao means "family happiness, family care" and "relish", which is intended to penetrate the family market. Although there are only three product lines, Li Bin believes that this family model of more than 200,000 yuan is likely to achieve monthly sales of 5-60,000 units.
However, it remains to be seen whether the L60, the first car of the new brand, will be able to achieve the target sales.
In the past, Li Bin relied on his storytelling ability to attract investment from the Hefei government and local tyrants in the Middle East, and found a way to "send NIO out of the ICU" at every important node.
This time he ran to the United States, can he reproduce the financing magic?
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