Source | Bohu Finance (bohuFN)
Author | Dreamed
Maverick Electric, 2022 has fallen behind for a year. In 2023, my heart will be broken again.
At the beginning of 2023, Maverick Electric set a sales forecast of 1 million to 1.2 million units for the whole year, but the actual sales were far less than expected.
According to the financial report, for the whole year of 2023, Maverick's revenue will be 2.6518 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 16.3%, and the annual net loss will be 271.8 million yuan, compared with the net loss of 49.5 million yuan in the previous year, and the loss margin will expand significantly.
At the same time, Maverick sales are also gradually declining, last year Maverick electric vehicle sales were 709,800, a year-on-year decrease of 14.6%, which is the second consecutive year of decline in the company's sales. Revenue and net profit both declined, and Maverick Electric was questioned more and more.
Its CEO Li Yan attributed the overall decline in sales to the rising costs caused by the rise in lithium battery prices, he mentioned, "From 2022 to 2023, the price of lithium batteries has risen by 70%, and this single cost item accounts for 40% of the vehicle cost from 40% to 70%, which is bound to have some impact." (Bohu Finance found that on April 24, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate was 110,500 yuan/ton, more than double the price at the beginning of 2021.) ）
In order to cope with the sharp increase in the price of raw materials and maintain the gross profit margin, Maverick has raised the retail guide price of all lithium battery products by 200-1,000 yuan in 2022, and as a result, the sales volume has decreased by 200,000 units.
The more important reason is the intensification of peer competition.
In the early days, Maverick Electric rose rapidly with "high-end" and "intelligent", but now it is not a new story. While Mavericks is leading the price of two-wheeled electric vehicles to rise, its competitors are also stepping up to hit the high-end, and have achieved certain results.
According to the data of the "2023 China Two-Wheeled Electric Vehicle Industry White Paper" released by iResearch, in terms of offline sales of electric bicycles in 2022, in the brand sales of 4000-4900 yuan, Maverick ranks fourth, behind Yadea, Emma and Tailing. (It is generally believed in the industry that two-wheeled electric vehicles above 4,000 yuan belong to the high-end market) In the sales of brands above 5,000 yuan, Mavericks lags behind No. 9 and ranks second. In the market share of products above 7,000 yuan, Mavericks accounted for 43.8%, also lagging behind Nine.
Is it wrong to do high-end?
For high-end two-wheeled electric vehicles, there has always been controversy in the market, is it necessary?
Let's take a look at two sets of data first, according to Master Lu X iResearch's "2023 China Two-Wheeled Electric Vehicle Industry White Paper", the current consumer car purchase price is concentrated in 3000-5000 yuan, etc.
Another set of data is that, according to the statistics of Master Lu Data Lab, although Nine Company and Maverick Electric will respectively win the first and second place in the offline sales of two-wheeled electric vehicles of more than 5,000 yuan in 2022, the highest annual sales have failed to exceed 100,000 units, which is enough to see that the high-end market share is really limited.
One is that the market is limited, and the other is that high-end is really difficult to do.
Taking the industry's first boss "Yadea" as an example, as early as 2014, it was eyeing the "high-end", but due to several vigorous price wars, the high-end consumer mind was not established.
Since 2019, the "high-end" has been in full swing. According to historical financial reports, from 2019 to 2022, Yadea's R&D expenses were 386 million yuan, 605 million yuan, 844 million yuan, and 1.106 billion yuan respectively, increasing year by year. As a result, Yadea has stopped revealing the specific sales progress of Guanneng in its 2022 annual report, and the more high-end VFLY has never disclosed its sales volume.
At the same time, according to Yadea's 2023 annual financial report, the average revenue per vehicle of Yadea's electric two-wheelers decreased from about 1,569.63 yuan/unit in 2022 to about 1,485.42 yuan/unit in 2023, and the company's gross profit margin decreased from about 18.1% in 2022 to about 16.9% in 2023.
And it is precisely because it is difficult to do high-end that it gives some opportunities to new brands such as Mavericks and Nine.
In the middle and low end, the underlying logic of two-wheeled electric vehicles is still a typical manufacturing industry, and profitability is heavily dependent on scale effect, and the market share is further concentrated by the head brands.
For example, in 2023, Yadea will sell 16.5 million electric two-wheelers, a year-on-year increase of about 17.9%. At the same time, as of December 31, 2023, Yadea has more than 40,000 stores in China, and Yadea alone has a market share of 33.7%. (Emma's market share is 19.5%).
As a comparison, the sales volume of Maverick electric vehicles in 2023 will be 70.98 units, and the number of offline stores will only be 2,856. It can be said that the new brand wants to grab the market from the low-end and several giants in the industry, and there is little hope. Li Yan once said, "It may be necessary to achieve annual sales of two or three million before you can think about sinking." ”
In recent years, Maverick and No. 9 have indeed seized a place in the industry with their high-end two-wheeled electric vehicles.
It's just that the situation now is that the Mavericks are stalling at the top end and the number nine is still on the upswing.
Since its listing in 2020, the No. 9 electric two-wheeler business has maintained rapid growth, with revenue increasing nearly tenfold in four years. According to the financial report data, from 2020 to 2023, the revenue of No. 9 electric two-wheeled vehicles will be 432 million yuan, 1.334 billion yuan, 2.663 billion yuan and 4.232 billion yuan respectively, a year-on-year increase of 17540.91%, 208.84%, 88.43% and 74.10% respectively.
What happened to the calf, and where does it go from here?
Inner and outer diseases
Li Yan believes that the reason for the decline in sales of Mavericks in 2023 is not only the continuous increase in the price of lithium batteries, but also the problems in the operation of overseas markets. In the previous year, sales in overseas markets totaled 109,000 units, down 10.1% year-on-year.
It was revealed that Mavericks, the largest dealer in Europe, fell into the dilemma of cash flow shortage during the epidemic, and its business almost came to a standstill in early 2023. It wasn't until the second half of the year that Mavericks decided to no longer rely entirely on the power of dealers, and began to build the company's own operation team, find local partners, and directly participate in the sales of C-end stores in stores.
However, this will take a long time, and in the past year, Maverick has almost no products to sell in some markets in Europe, including Italy and France, resulting in a decline in sales in overseas markets in 2023.
But in the view of Bohu Finance, it can be said that there are external reasons in front, but there are not many problems with Maverick itself, the most important one is that Maverick has been labeled as a high-end with "innovation", but now Maverick does not seem to be "new".
Maverick entered the market with labels such as "smart" and "high-end" in the early days, and an important characteristic is that it abandoned the traditional lead-acid battery and chose a lithium battery with a higher cost but stronger battery life. However, in the second half of 2023, Maverick began to seize the mid-to-high-end lead-acid car market with its peers, but compared with its peers, Maverick has been on the market for almost a year, which directly affects its sales.
In the first quarter of 2023, Maverick electric sales were 94,407 units, a year-on-year decrease of 42.3%. Sales in the second quarter were 211996 units, up 1.5% year-on-year. From the perspective of the whole year of 2023, the sales of lead-acid vehicles account for 20%~25% of Maverick's total domestic total.
The former innovators began to imitate their peers and lagged behind their peers, for the coverage of market segments, Mavericks are also a slow beat, such as the design for female users, particularly good 4000 yuan products, Nine, Yadea, Emma, etc. have launched products specifically for female users, Maverick does not.
At the same time, the impressive intelligence of the Mavericks, such as APP positioning, NFC and other functions, has now become the standard configuration of models of major manufacturers such as Nine, Yadea, and Emma.
What's more, according to the statistics of "Consumer Reports", in less than a year from May 2023 to the present, Maverick electric vehicle products have been on the list of unqualified electric bicycles announced by local market supervision departments for seven times. Coupled with the repeated exposure of product quality problems, consumers are disenchanting calves.
This can be seen from the R&D expenses.
According to statistics, Nine, which also focuses on "high-end intelligence", will invest 583 million yuan in R&D in 2022, while Maverick's R&D investment will only be 176 million yuan. In 2023, Maverick's R&D expenses will drop to 151 million yuan, while the pan-marketing expenses will exceed 496 million yuan.
These seem to be contrary to Maverick Electric's high-end strategy all along, in other words, high-end cannot be established just by high prices, and the different circumstances of Maverick and Nine now illustrate this problem to a certain extent.
Write at the end
Mavericks don't seem to think so, though.
On February 29 this year, at the new product launch conference of Mavericks, Li Yan released three new products in one breath of electric motorcycle NX, electric self NXT, and off-road electric motorcycle X3, with public prices ranging from 6299 yuan to 29980 yuan.
At the beginning of March, he also revealed that the best selling new products are 6,000 yuan and 12,000 yuan versions, of which the 12,000 yuan version accounts for 45%~50% of the shipments. However, will this be able to save Mavericks' sluggish sales? Bohu Finance is not optimistic about this. On the one hand, there is still a long time to go before the construction of Maverick's overseas market.
On the other hand, with the continuous development of the industry, in fact, the entire electric vehicle industry as a whole is becoming "intelligent", such as the previously mentioned NFC unlocking, intelligent anti-theft, smart display and other functions are already "standard". Rather than blindly emphasizing "intelligence", focusing on basic functions such as battery life and driving safety, promoting product upgrades, and truly forming your own technological moat is the key.
Li Yan once mentioned in an interview, "I haven't figured out whether to achieve 3 million or 6 million vehicles in the Chinese market." He took Apple's mobile phone as an example, with a market share of more than 10 percent, but took away 50% of the profits of the entire industry.
But Apple has disrupted the whole world, and Mavericks has not disrupted the industry yet.
Reference Sources:
1. Sina Finance: Maverick Electric Left Behind: Revenue Fell by 16.31%, Losses Expanded by 449.58% Sales at home and abroad both declined and "slapped the CEO in the face".
2. China Entrepreneur Magazine: With a loss of 270 million yuan a year, "two-wheeled Tesla" wants to break out of the mud
3. iResearch: 2023 White Paper on China's Two-Wheeled Electric Vehicle Industry