Source丨IT orange
Author丨Fok Yingxian
Editor丨Wu Meimei
Cover picture source: Wenxin Yige
With the increasingly severe challenge of global climate change and the increasing depletion of traditional fossil energy, the new energy industry is becoming a key force to promote the transformation of the global energy structure, and the development and utilization of new energy has become the focus of common attention of all countries in the world.
In the past decade, technological progress and cost reduction have made new energy occupy an increasingly important position in the global energy supply, and at the same time, the support of government policies, the growth of market demand and the improvement of public awareness of environmental protection have also provided a strong impetus for the development of the new energy industry, which has experienced a process from start-up to rapid development.
This article is the first part of the "2023-2024 China New Energy Track Investment and Financing Report", and the next part will continue to be released on the IT Orange official account, so stay tuned.
The following IT orange will show you the market situation of investment and financing in the new energy industry in 2023 through data combing.
From the perspective of the number of financing transactions, the number of financing events in the primary market of the new energy industry in the past decade has shown a fluctuating growth trend, which reflects the continuous attention and confidence of the capital market in the new energy industry.
In recent years, with the global pursuit of a low-carbon economy and the maturity of new energy technologies, the number of financing events in the domestic new energy industry has increased more significantly, with 452 investment and financing events occurring in 2023, a record high. As of March 20, 2024, 84 financing events have occurred in the new energy industry, showing the vigorous development of the new energy industry.
At the same time, the scale of the financing amount of the new energy industry in the primary market has shown an increase in the rest of the years since 2014, except for a slight decline in 2019, reaching a peak in 2022 with a total financing amount of 157.088 billion yuan.
Looking back at the development of the new energy industry in the past ten years, the new energy vehicle subsidy policy launched by the state in 2010 can be regarded as the starting point of the outbreak of the industry, but the new energy industry did not receive widespread attention from investors at that time. With the transformation and upgrading of the economic structure, the continuous maturity of new energy technology and the comprehensive promotion of subsidies, the demand for new energy is becoming increasingly strong, and investors have begun to turn their attention to this field and pay attention to market segments such as automobiles, photovoltaics, energy storage and wind power.
However, there is a period of exhaustion with policy incentives alone. The new energy vehicle subsidy originally scheduled to end in 2020 has been significantly reduced in advance in 2018, and this impact has also affected the primary market: in 2018, the investment and financing events in the domestic new energy industry broke the trend of continuous growth since 2014-2017, and there was a "double decline" in the number and amount of investment. After the outbreak of the epidemic, new energy subsidies continued and achieved a moderate decline.
In September 2020, China announced the "3060 dual carbon" goal to the world at the United Nations General Assembly. In China, the pursuit of "dual carbon" has been transformed into a rigid indicator of the economic work of governments at all levels, which has strongly promoted the rapid top-down growth of demand in the new energy industry. Key areas such as new energy vehicles, lithium batteries and photovoltaic products are in short supply as a whole, and "star start-up enterprises" in the new energy industry have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and the industry is unprecedented.
Starting from January 1, 2023, the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles will officially come to an end. This makes some of the enterprises in the industry that rely on subsidies to survive face difficulties, and even be eliminated, and the new energy industry has officially changed from policy-oriented to market-oriented, survival of the fittest, and the industry has ushered in a "big reshuffle". It is worth noting that after the full end of the subsidy, the primary market did not see a decrease in financing events in 2019, mainly because in addition to new energy vehicles, the entire industry is currently facing more financing in other directions.
In 2023, the government issued more than 200 policies aimed at supporting and regulating the development of the new energy industry, mainly in key areas such as automobiles, photovoltaics, energy storage and power batteries. The introduction of these policies has provided investors with clear confidence.
After more than ten years of development, China's new energy brand has developed from technology foundry to brand going overseas. The exports of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products mentioned in the 2023 Government Work Report increased by nearly 30%. China's new energy industry has become an important force affecting the development of the global new energy industry.
Looking to the future, with the development of large artificial intelligence models, the demand for computing power has exploded, and the demand for energy and electricity has also surged. As Open AI's Altman has pointed out, the two most important currencies in the future will be computing power and energy. The development of the new energy industry still has a lot of room for imagination.
From the perspective of the average amount of financing in a single event in the new energy industry, the average single financing amount of the industry from 2014 to 2016 is significantly lower than the average single financing amount (reference line) of the industry in the past ten years, the average single financing amount of the new energy industry is generally higher than the average amount from 2017 to 2020, and the overall investment in the new energy track is active from 2020 to 2022, and the average single financing amount has risen to a new level, reaching 367 million yuan in 2021, the highest in the past.
The increase in the average single financing amount is mainly due to the influx of capital from all walks of life and the frequent occurrence of super-large financing in the industry. For example, in the past 10 years, there have been 6 financing events of more than 10 billion yuan in the field of new energy, all of which are concentrated in 2020-2022, and two will occur in 2022 alone, respectively, GAC Aion received 18.294 billion yuan in Series A financing in October 2022, which is also the highest single financing amount in the domestic new energy field in the past years, and BeyonCa Binli received a strategic investment of 10 billion yuan. The 10 billion financing event raised the average financing level of the entire industry that year.
IT Orange divides the primary market financing stage into early-stage financing, growth stage financing, mid-to-late stage financing, and strategic investment. Early-stage financing includes seed round, angel round and A round (including Pre-A, A, A+), Pre-B round, B round, B+ round, C round and C+ round in the growth stage, and D round to pre-IPO stage in the middle and late stages. The proportion of early-stage investment in the domestic new energy industry has been decreasing from 2014 to 2020, accounting for only 36% in 2020, the lowest in history, and the proportion of early investment in 2021-2023 has increased slightly, returning to the level of the same period in 2018. In the past decade, the proportion of investment in the growth period of the new energy industry has remained roughly in the range of 15%-25%. Since 2015, the new energy industry has only had mid-to-late stage investment, accounting for 5% of the total. The proportion of strategic investment increased from 2014 to 2020, and by 2020, the proportion of strategic investment in the new energy industry reached 45%, even surpassing the early stage investment, becoming the largest round of that year, and the proportion of strategic investment in 2020-2023 has been declining. The rising proportion of strategic investment in the new energy industry is closely related to the in-depth layout of local governments and enterprises in the industry. Many local governments are actively attracting the implementation of new energy projects through the investment of state-owned capital, aiming to optimize and upgrade the local industrial structure. For example, among the 50 new energy investments made by Shenzhen Capital Group, there were 19 strategic investment events, of which 6 were invested in Shenzhen, Zhuhai and other places. At the same time, some enterprises and industrial capital also see the huge potential of the new energy industry, and integrate resources through strategic investment to enhance the synergy effect of the industrial chain. In 2023, Xiaomi will make strategic investments in auto parts R&D provider Yingzhi Thermal Management, battery materials R&D company Lingyixi, lithium-ion power battery R&D manufacturer Ganfeng Lithium Battery, and Shunwei Capital will strategically invest in battery manufacturer Yunshan Power.
Looking specifically at the situation in 2023, the primary market investment in the domestic new energy industry is still dominated by early-stage investment, of which Series A accounts for the largest proportion, reaching 39%. This was followed by strategic investment, accounting for 23%.
In terms of the currency distribution of investment events in the new energy industry in the domestic primary market in the past decade, RMB investment accounted for 96.67%, and the number of US dollar investment and financing events was 76, accounting for 3.21%.
Judging from public information, there are very few financing events in other currencies such as Hong Kong dollars and euros, including the strategic investment of HK $1.273 billion from CSF in 2021, Beijing Enterprises Clean Energy, a photovoltaic power generation service provider in Hong Kong, China, and Huineng Technology, a developer of solid-state lithium battery technology in Taiwan, received a strategic investment of nearly 100 million euros from Daimler, and Rongta Zhizao, a new energy vehicle manufacturing platform, received a Series A investment of 8 million euros from Xue Manzi (Manzi Fund) and Zhen Fund.
By combing the data, IT Juzi found that in the past ten years, the financing events of the new energy industry in the domestic primary market were mainly distributed in the eastern coastal areas. The three provinces with the most financing events (the darkest color) are Jiangsu, Guangdong, and Zhejiang. Among them, Jiangsu Province ranked first in the financing popularity of the domestic new energy industry with 439 investment and financing events, Guangdong Province had more than 400 financing events, and Zhejiang Province had more than 300 financing events.
It was followed by Shanghai and Beijing, with 295 and 290 financing events respectively in the new energy sector, two megacities that are comparable in size to a strong province and rank in the second echelon.
The financing events announced in Shandong, Fujian, Anhui, Shaanxi and other places are between 50 and 100, and there is a large gap with the first two.
Shaanxi Province is the most eye-catching performer in the western region. In the past ten years, 26 enterprises in Shaanxi Province have completed 51 financings, with an average of 2 financings per company.
For example, Singularity Energy, a developer of energy storage systems, has completed 6 financings, Aerospace Minxin, a provider of power management chip products and solutions, has completed 4 financings, Hydrogen Yi Energy, a developer and application of organic liquid hydrogen storage technology, Tiantian Charging, an electric bicycle charging pile operator, Xingyuan Borui, a manufacturer of core products of new energy vehicle charging and discharging and energy storage systems, and Proton Motors, a developer of new energy intelligent vehicles, have received 3 financings, and 7 companies including Jianrui Woneng, a new energy battery provider, have received more than two financings.
According to statistics, the top ten cities with the largest amount of financing in the domestic new energy industry are concentrated in the top five provinces with the most financing events, in addition to Beijing and Shanghai, Jiangsu has three cities of Changzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing on the list, Zhejiang also has Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Ningbo three cities on the list, and Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province are on the list.
In terms of overall financing events, Shanghai's new energy enterprises have received the highest attention from capital, and the number of financing events slightly exceeds that of Beijing, but the total amount of financing is not as good as that of Beijing, and Beijing's new energy enterprises rank first in the country with a total financing amount of 84.4 billion yuan.
Specifically, looking at the provinces and cities with the highest amount of new energy financing in 2023, Jiangsu Province topped the list with a financing amount of 29.13 billion yuan.
It is worth noting that Anhui Province and Sichuan Province, as non-coastal areas, also performed well.
There were only 21 financing events in Anhui, but the total amount of financing reached 12.3 billion yuan, ranking fifth among all provinces and cities. In 2023, there will be four investments of more than 1 billion yuan in Anhui Province, of which Huasheng New Energy will receive two investments of 2 billion yuan.
There were only 10 financing events in Sichuan Province, with a total amount of 7.99 billion yuan, of which Shehong Tianqi, a manufacturer of lithium carbonate and its lithium series products, and Libao New Materials, a R&D and manufacturer of lithium battery cathode materials, are the top 20 companies with the largest financing amount in 2023. To a certain extent, it shows that the new energy industry in the central and western regions is rising rapidly, and the support policies of local governments and regional industrial advantages have begun to take effect.
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The next part includes: the financing distribution of each link of the new energy industry chain, the top 20 new energy companies with the most financing, the most active investors in the new energy track, and the analysis of unicorn companies in the new energy track......
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