"In 2023, the loss of electric vehicles in the automotive industry will increase, and the intensity of industry competition will not decrease in the next three years. On May 10, Great Wall Motor held its 2024 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. In the venue, shareholders asked questions enthusiastically, and Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd., kept saying golden sentences.
In addition to Wei Jianjun, President Mu Feng, Chief Growth Officer Li Ruifeng, Chief Technology Officer Wang Yuanli, Vice President and Head of Overseas Business Shi Qingke, Vice President of Product Intelligence Wu Huixiao, Deputy General Manager of Technology Center Liu Bao and others were also present. They jointly answered the questions of shareholders, including the development policy in 2024, product and market layout, intelligent technology development route, and Great Wall Motor's overseas strategy.
Wei Jianjun has always been sharp and direct about the insight and controversial issues of the industry. Loss is a major examination problem faced by independent car companies, in this regard, 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 quality market share.
Adhere to long-termism, and the intensity of competition will not decrease in the next three years
Recently, Great Wall Motors released its results for the first four months of this year, once again showing its amazing explosiveness. In April this year, Great Wall Motor sold 94,796 new cars. From January to April, a total of 370129 new cars were sold, a year-on-year increase of 18.18%. However, the involution of the new energy vehicle industry is also continuing to intensify.
For example, the development of Great Wall Motor's five vehicle brands is not consistent in terms of sales. In April this year, for example, only Wei brand, tank and Great Wall pickup trucks achieved year-on-year growth. Among them, the sales volume of tank brands was 20,469 units, a year-on-year increase of 87.51%. The sales volume of the Ora brand was 4,686 units, a year-on-year decrease of 47.35%. As for the decline in sales of the Ora brand, Li Ruifeng said that this year will launch a facelifted product of the good cat. In addition, Ola will also go overseas to ASEAN, South America and other markets.
In view of the current situation that pure electric models are selling more and more at a loss, Wei Jianjun put forward the countermeasures of Great Wall Motors, that is, "doing something and not doing something." Enterprises are to create social value, if the loss, in the long run, it is impossible to persevere, must have their own hematopoietic ability. He stressed that Great Wall should insist on selling more profitable and non-loss-making models.
Judging from the financial report for the first quarter of this year, the operating income was 42.86 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.6%; With a net profit of 3.228 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1752.55%, Great Wall Motors has properly completed the established strategic goals in making money. In the current chaotic market cycle, Great Wall Motors takes profit priority as the premise of the company's steady operation, and spares no effort to carry out long-term changes to form a virtuous cycle of industrial chain ecology.
Talking about the "long board": this year's overseas sales challenge is 500,000 units
How should automakers respond to the increasingly fierce competition in the industry? At this shareholders' meeting, Wei Jianjun gave a way to break the situation: to give full play to Great Wall Motor's longboard - pickup, tank, and export business. At present, for Great Wall Motors, the most celebrated thing is the rise of the export business.
Going overseas has long been a highlight of Great Wall Motor's performance. Last year, Great Wall's overseas sales were 314,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 82.37%, and its revenue doubled to 56.3 billion yuan. In the first quarter of this year, Great Wall Motor sold 92,000 units in overseas markets, compared with 36,000 units in April. This year is a big year for Chinese cars to go overseas, and Great Wall Motor's overseas sales target of 500,000 units has attracted much attention.
For this goal, Wei Jianjun is still full of confidence, he said: "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. But what cannot be ignored is that Great Wall Motor's choice of overseas strategy is very pragmatic. At a time when it has become a trend for Chinese auto brands to go overseas, Shi Qingke said that Great Wall Motors should not only promote scale and market share, but also maintain profit growth.
In addition to exports, high-end models such as tanks are also Great Wall Motor's longboard advantages. In order to better serve high-end users, Great Wall Motor also tried a dual sales system, that is, in addition to maintaining the existing dealer system, it will also adopt a direct sales model. The directly operated brand was named Great Wall Smart to complement Great Wall Motor's network layout.
"The reason why I do direct sales is that I can't help it." In Wei Jianjun's view, in fact, Wei brand products are not bad but there are deficiencies in car sales channels, the current environment of car dealers to close the transformation of stores, under greater pressure, the Great Wall dealers in the past also lack the confidence to operate more than 300,000 yuan of high-end cars, the establishment of direct channels is to strengthen the sales of high-end brands.
As of May this year, the direct business of "Great Wall Smart Selection" has landed in 33 stores, and it is expected to reach about 200 by the end of the year. The first batch of directly operated stores underwrote a total of 6 models of Wei brand and tank brand. Next, WEY brand products continue to iterate, Li Ruifeng said: WEY brand Blue Mountain Intelligent Driving Edition will be marketed in June this year, and will be delivered to customers in batches in the third quarter; The Alpine facelift will be available to the market in the fourth quarter. In the middle of this month, the WEY Mocha Hi4 Performance Edition will be launched.
"Over-investment" in forward-looking R&D, the turning point is just around the corner
In addition to caring about the existing product layout, technological advancement is also an area that shareholders focus on.
In the past few years, Great Wall Motor has invested heavily in R&D, and currently has more than 110 forward-looking R&D projects. The upcoming aero-acoustic wind tunnel will be a state-of-the-art wind tunnel laboratory. The technical center has a large number of specialists and 8 R&D bases. Great Wall is also developing large models, including intelligent driving models, AI code models, language models, etc. In the field of research and development, Great Wall Motor will spare no effort to invest.
Huge R&D investment in exchange for a number of technical reserves. Wang Yuanli revealed that the 4C ultra-fast charging core has been developed, and the 6C ultra-fast charging core is being made, which can achieve 500 kilometers of energy replenishment in 10 minutes. Solid-state batteries are also being developed, and now they have the capability of all-solid-state pouch cells, and will launch 800V high-voltage electric drive all-in-one products in the future, with a comprehensive working efficiency of 93%.
Finally, Wei Jianjun also talked about motorcycles at the conference. He said: "We want to build a motorcycle that can be written in history and represent the latest technology in China today, and try to achieve both feelings and money." Now, Great Wall Motor's first motorcycle has been launched, and this 8-cylinder engine motorcycle will participate in the Beijing Motorcycle Show on May 17.
summary
In the context of fierce competition in the automobile market, Wei Jianjun and his team were full of confidence in the future development of Great Wall Motors in their two-hour speech. For shareholders and the market, Great Wall Motor's technological breakthrough and the acceleration of its overseas layout are all important good news.
The net profit in the first quarter of this year rose sharply, and there was little continuous layout and dedication behind it, whether it was the new energy strategic action that had been transformed for many years, or going to sea, Great Wall Motors has been insisting on doing. However, the market competition tends to be "white-hot", and the pressure on Great Wall Motors is also increasing day by day, especially in the case of intensified competition for market share of off-road vehicles, Great Wall Motors' market position is facing great challenges. How to stay ahead in the fierce market competition is one of the problems that Great Wall Motors needs to think about and solve. (Wen Chen)