"In 2024, 2025, 2026, I don't think the intensity of this competition will decrease. We must face the next three years with a long-term approach. At the shareholders' meeting of Great Wall Motors on May 10, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, said when talking about industry competition. As far as listed companies are concerned, shareholders' meetings are generally closed and require strict confidentiality. This time, Great Wall directly chose to broadcast live to the outside world, and all the core executives attended, winning a lot of praise. The industry believes that the Great Wall's frank attitude to the outside world shows the determination and confidence of enterprise reform.
In the shareholders' meeting, there were also many sharp questions this time, such as industry losses, Great Wall's car problems, etc., and the senior management team of Great Wall Motors answered them one by one. Among them, on the question of "what is the core development strategy of Great Wall Motors", Wei Jianjun said: "We must stick to the bottom line in the fierce competition, adhere to long-termism, give full play to the long board, and pursue a high-quality market share." This is also the core idea that Great Wall executives have repeatedly emphasized throughout the shareholders' meeting. And "long-termism" has been emphasized by Great Wall Motors many times.
"If it is all losses, the company will not be able to hold on in the long run, so it must have its own hematopoietic ability." Wei Jianjun said that with the intensification of competition in the industry, the loss area of the automobile, especially the electric vehicle industry, will increase since 2023. In this case, Great Wall Motors needs to adhere to the bottom-line thinking, pay attention to the long term, and achieve "doing something and not doing something".
Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors
Among them, "doing something" refers to actively laying out and taking the lead in the new energy market. "Great Wall Motor's product matrix is the best and most complete, with pickup trucks, new energy and new energy, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, gasoline, and diesel." Wei Jianjun said. But on the other hand, in the face of the unprofitable industry problem of pure electric vehicles, Great Wall must be restrained and cannot blindly take the market share.
One is to fight less price wars. Mu Feng, president of Great Wall Motors, said that in the early years, independent brands had to maintain a safe price difference of 3-50,000 yuan with joint venture brands in order to have the ability to compete. Now, with the development of new energy, from the mainstream to the luxury joint venture brands, they can no longer keep the price. However, in this process, Great Wall Motors will definitely adhere to long-termism and bottom-line doctrine to occupy a good brand position for the future. This means that Great Wall will not "impulsively" join the price war.
Mu Feng, President of Great Wall Motors
Great Wall will moderately reduce sales of models with particularly serious losses, such as Great Wall Motors in 2022 because of serious losses in single vehicles, and the production of the hot-selling Ora Black/White Cat will be discontinued.
At the shareholders' meeting, Wei Jianjun also mentioned that although the sales volume of the Wei brand Blue Mountain is not much, it has been able to achieve no loss, and the loss of the hot-selling models of Ora, which is regarded as a niche brand, is relatively small. At the same time, the Great Wall will also strive to give full play to its own longboard to achieve no loss or slight loss; And models with relatively high profits should be vigorously promoted, such as: tank brands and pickups. In this way, we can expand our profits.
The benefits of this long-term approach are directly reflected in the financial figures. In the first quarter of 2024, Great Wall Motor's sales volume was 275,300 units, a year-on-year increase of 25%. Among them, the sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 59,200, doubling the sales volume of the same period last year, and overseas sales reached 92,800 units, a year-on-year increase of 78.51%. In terms of profitability, in the first quarter of 2024, Great Wall Motor achieved a total operating income of 42.86 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.6%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company reached 3.228 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17 times, setting the highest revenue and profit in the same quarter in history.
Exports: 400,000 for 500,000, new energy is a dimensionality reduction blow
Among them, regarding exports, Wei Jianjun said that in 2024, Great Wall Motors will "guarantee 400,000 and fight for 500,000" when it goes to sea. If Great Wall is to challenge its overseas sales target of 500,000 units, it will increase its exports by 58% from last year's 316,000 units this year, and reach an average monthly export volume of more than 50,000 units in the next eight months. In terms of brands, the Haval brand is the base market, with a target sales of 300,000+, pickup trucks of 60,000 units, and tank brands of 50,000-60,000 units. At the same time, in 2024, Great Wall will also promote Euler in key overseas markets.
In terms of exports, Wei Jianjun believes that new energy is a good incision. "New energy is China's strategy, not the strategy of other countries, and there is no foreign country that supports new energy like China. Therefore, now it is very advantageous for our new energy products to go out, and it is a dimensionality reduction blow to foreign markets. Wei Jianjun said.
In addition, regarding the development of overseas markets, Shi Qingke, vice president of Great Wall Motors, said: "We are facing competition overseas with Japanese and Korean brands. Therefore, Great Wall Motors should focus on the ONE GWM strategy, seek increments, and quickly enter new markets; At the same time, it is recognized that the layout value is greater than the short-term business value.
Shi Qingke, vice president of Great Wall Motors
After abandoning sedans in 2012 to focus on SUVs, SUVs are the only battlefield for Great Wall Motors. At the shareholders' meeting, Li Ruifeng, chief growth officer of Great Wall Motors, said that Great Wall Motors would not give up and would not exclude the development of the car business. For example, the three models of the pure electric brand Ora, which currently insists on making cars for women, are all sedans. At the same time, Great Wall Motor's high-end brand Wei brand will also consider the layout timing of the sedan category.
And in the core SUV, especially the hard-core off-road, Great Wall emphasizes its advantages. At present, with the entry of brands such as Chery and BYD into the off-road market, the status of the tank as an autonomous hard-core off-road tank seems to be challenged. However, Li Ruifeng, CGO of Great Wall, said that Great Wall is not worried about this, because Great Wall has enough advantages in hard-core off-road. "This may not be anxiety for our tank brand, the main thing is that the late entrants and followers, how can there be a place, this is a question for them to think about." Li Ruifeng said.
Great Wall CGO Li Ruifeng
From 2020 to the present, the tank brand has successively launched models such as Tank 300, 400 Hi4-T, 500, and 700Hi4T, forming a full coverage of the price range from more than 200,000 to even 500,000, and the Tank 800 will be launched in the future. At present, the tank has 400,000 user groups, with a market share of 55%. Li Ruifeng believes that on these foundations, superimposed on the off-road technical reserves of Great Wall Motors, will become a natural barrier for tanks in the competition.
Channel reform: self-operation promotes high-end transformation
In the sales composition of Great Wall Motors, the proportion of WEY brand sales has been relatively limited. Last year, Great Wall Motors adjusted the positioning of the WEY brand, and currently focuses on intelligent driving and intelligent life. In the successive launch of products such as Blue Mountain and Gaoshan, WEY brand has gradually found a market rhythm, with a sales growth rate of 14.35% in 2023; From January to April this year, the sales growth rate reached 143.44%.
However, Wei Jianjun is not satisfied with this achievement, and believes that Wei brand products are not bad, but there is a problem of insufficient channel competitiveness. It pointed out that in the past two years, many Great Wall Motors dealers have closed stores for transformation. At the same time, the dealers who left behind the Great Wall also lacked confidence in operating high-end cars of more than 300,000 yuan.
"Our products are indeed upgraded in grade, we are not Haval, our dealers have to adapt to the ability to sell a car for 300,000 yuan, and they do need to challenge, and the dealer's response level lacks confidence, and the degree of response and investment willingness is very slow." Wei Jianjun said. In his view, if you want to face higher-end users and impact a higher-end market, you need to achieve higher-end services.
Therefore, since the end of last year, Great Wall has established a sub-brand of "Great Wall Zhixuan" on top of the original dealer system to be responsible for the direct business of Great Wall Motors. "We have no way to do direct sales, you want the brand to go up, this is more high-end, if you don't do direct sales, it is really not good to do it at this stage, we also verified this problem through last year." Wei Jianjun said.
It is understood that the direct store from the store construction to the team are led by Great Wall Motors, the current sales brand is only for the high-end market Wei brand and tank 6 models, other sub-brands are still sold in the original dealer system. Up to now, Great Wall Smart has landed 33 directly-operated stores. Wei Jianjun said that judging from the order growth during the May Day holiday, the effect of the Great Wall smart selection model is good. According to the plan, by the end of the year, the number of Great Wall Smart Selections will reach 200.
As for the development prospect of Great Wall Motor's intelligence, Mu Feng, President of Great Wall Motor, said that smart cars should return to the essence of automobile life, and Great Wall Motor's future intelligent scene is a pleasant experience. Mu Feng pointed out that intelligent cars happily send consumers from point A to point B, and intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit ensure that users feel pleasant between point A and point B. The intelligent experience of the Great Wall is the pursuit of the feeling of old drivers, not only the fact of safety, but also the pursuit of consumer psychological safety, to do this, the large model is inescapable. The Blue Mountain Intelligent Driving Edition, which will be launched at Great Wall, will be China's first truly end-to-end autonomous driving based on large models.
Wang Yuanli, chief technology officer of Great Wall Motors, said that in the past few years, Great Wall Motors has invested heavily in research and development, and has had forward-looking R&D projects in the fields of power, new energy, intelligent cockpit, automatic driving, and intelligent chassis, and has established more than 110 forward-looking projects.
Wang Yuanli, Chief Technology Officer of Great Wall Motors
At the shareholders' meeting, Wei Jianjun repeatedly emphasized that communication in the Internet era requires Internet thinking, that is, to be able to face to face with users. We have seen that since last year, many high-end members of the Great Wall have settled in Weibo and moved to the foreground. And Wei Jianjun himself is active in the front line of Great Wall Motor's marketing activities, not only operating his own Weibo and Douyin accounts, but also live broadcasting.
Wei Jianjun said that his own platforms such as Weibo and Douyin are still in the preliminary stage, and now his traffic is not very good, so he can't be called an Internet celebrity, and he will strive to be a high-quality Internet celebrity. "In the future, live broadcast is like eating, you can broadcast it if you want to, and the Internet is to pursue more sincere and real communication with everyone." Wei Jianjun said.