Yifan from the Vice-Pilot Temple
Smart Car Reference | Official account AI4Auto
How long does it take for a new EV manufacturer to go from establishment to IPO?
Now the latest record is here -
37 months, Extreme Krypton speed.
More than 240,000 vehicles have been delivered in three years, with a cumulative R&D investment of nearly 17 billion yuan, and 882 charging stations...... CATL, Intel, Mobileye, and Bilibili all voted.
The result of such results is:
Get more than 5 times oversubscribed and end the subscription one day in advance. On the first day of listing, the stock price rose by nearly 33%, and the market value approached 50 billion yuan.
This is also the largest IPO of Chinese concept stocks in the United States since July 2021, outside of the SPAC model.
The fastest IPO new force in car manufacturing
ZEEKR issued a total of 21 million American Depositary Shares, a larger amount than the original plan of 17.5 million shares.
The issue price of US$21 per share was the high-end price of the previously planned price range, which was nearly 5 times oversubscribed, and the subscription ended one day earlier than the original plan.
The opening price was US$26, up 40% from the issue price during the session, and nearly 35% higher than the issue price at the close, with a market value of US$6.898 billion, equivalent to about 49.85 billion yuan, close to the market value of Xpeng Motors.
ZEEKR was successfully listed, which is also the ninth IPO for Li Shufu after Geely Automobile, Volvo Cars, Qianjiang Motorcycle, Polestar, ECARX, Hanma Technology, Lifan Technology and Lotus.
At the same time, it set a new record and became the fastest IPO new car-making force at present:
From its establishment to listing, it took Xpeng 6 years, Ideal 5 years, and NIO nearly 4 years.
It took less than 37 months for ZEEKR to ring the bell from the brand release to the listing.
The question is, what does ZEEKR rely on for IPO?
The core indicators of ZEEKR Automobile
First of all, the core business is still to make and sell cars.
ZEEKR has launched four cars so far, focusing on an all-in high-end pure electric vehicle.
In 2021, the hunting car ZEEKR 001 was launched in the first year of its establishment, and the annual facelift was launched not long ago, with a minimum sale of 269,000 yuan.
In 2022, the six-seater MPV 009 was launched, and the 009 Glory was recently launched, which is benchmarked against the Cullinan and offers a configuration with a price of 789,000 yuan.
Last year, it successively launched the SUV Zeekr X, which was sold at 189,800 yuan, and the 007, which was priced between 209,900 and 299,900 yuan.
This year, there will be a large five-seater MPV, MIX is what everyone calls the "baby bus".
It can be seen that the current models of ZEEKR are mainly concentrated in the price range of 200,000-400,000.
In the past three years, more than 240,000 vehicles have been delivered. The first car was delivered in October 2021, and about 6,000 units were sold that year.
In 2022, the company sold 72,000 units, and in 2023, it will increase to 119,000 units.
In the first four months of this year, a total of 49,148 vehicles were delivered, an increase of 111% compared to the same period last year.
Deliveries have been rising year by year, and revenue has continued to rise, up 62% year-on-year last year:
I didn't sell many cars in the first year, how did I make so much money? Let's reveal the secret later.
The good thing is that since the establishment of ZEEKR, the gross profit margin of the whole vehicle has been positive, and the core business of the car basically does not trade at a loss.
It was 1.8% in 2021, 4.7% in 2022 and 15% last year.
The gross profit was 1.038 billion yuan, 2.47 billion yuan and 6.85 billion yuan respectively, doubling every year.
However, the overall loss is still in the red, and the net loss is expanding, but the increase has converged:
An Conghui, president of Geely Holding and CEO of Zeekr, said that he would strive to "turn losses into profits under the Hong Kong financial statement standards" this year - behind this sentence, there is a lot of information, should it also be listed in two places?
The continuous losses have not prevented ZEEKR from increasing R&D investment year by year:
In the three years since its establishment, ZEEKR has invested nearly 17 billion yuan in research and development. A simple calculation shows that the R&D investment/revenue ratio of ZEEKR in the past two years is about 17%.
In addition to automotive products, there is another point to consider, the construction of ZEEKR's energy supplement network:
As of December 31, 2023, ZEEKR has 882 self-built charging stations, covering 137 cities across the country, including 2,409 800V ultra-fast charging piles, ranking first in the number of self-built charging stations by car companies.
Sell more cars, pave piles widely, as a new force in stud pure electric car-making, ZEEKR's results are not bad, and recently sat on the throne of the first quarter pure electric sales champion.
However, the delivery volume and infrastructure of ZEEKR are not the reason for the IPO speed of ZEEKR to create a new car-making force, at least not the core reason.
Because ZEEKR's finances and revenues don't all depend on cars.
The Road to Krypton: The Transformation Egg of the Giants
According to a Geely insider, "Zeekr" was actually a "pure electric division" under Lynk & Co at the earliest.
Later, Geely saw the prosperity of the new wave of car manufacturing, and felt that only using ZEEKR as a business unit could not achieve the real new energy transformation, so it decided to make ZEEKR independent.
Give people, give resources:
Li Shufu, the No. 1 position, is the chairman of Zeekr, and An Conghui, president of Geely Holdings, is the brand CEO.
Given the core technology, the vast vehicle architecture.
This is not enough.
According to the prospectus, the revenue composition of ZEEKR mainly comes from the three major businesses, in addition to selling cars, there are also "three electric" business and technical services.
Among them, the "three electrics" business comes from Ningbo Weirui, and the technical service comes from CEVT (Geely Sino-European Automotive Technology Center).
As early as 2021, the year of the establishment of ZEEKR, Geely Geely Group transferred 51% of the equity of Ningbo Weirui and all the equity of CEVT to ZEEKR.
CEVT's current revenue contribution to ZEEKR has dropped to single digits, mainly looking at Ningbo Weirui.
It is mainly engaged in battery pack and electric drive assembly business, and last year it had the ability to manufacture battery cells, and ZEEKR launched its self-developed "golden brick battery".
There are many customers served by Weirui, and you can see that some of them are from within Geely, including Zeekr, Lotus, Polestar Lynk & Co, Volvo and Geely Galaxy.
In the first year of ZEEKR's establishment, the revenue from selling cars accounted for only 23.7% of the total revenue, while the three-electric business accounted for 32.6%.
In the second year, the sales revenue of ZEEKR Automobile exceeded that of the three-electric business, but the gross profit brought by it was less than that of the three-electric business.
In 2023, the sales revenue of ZEEKR vehicles will expand to 65.6% of the total business, and the three electric vehicles will still account for nearly 30%.
Therefore, Geely has provided a sprint power for ZEEKR through the integration of internal resources.
At the same time, the ZEEKR brand is independent, although it is backed by large manufacturers, but it has the vitality of a start-up company, focusing on high-end pure electric vehicles, increasing R&D investment year after year, products have been recognized, and delivery revenue has risen year after year.
The shareholders behind ZEEKR also helped the IPO, including giants in their respective fields such as Intel and CATL, as well as Intel's subsidiary Mobileye.
They are not only investors of ZEEKR, but also partners of ZEEKR.
ZEEKR 001 is currently equipped with an intelligent driving solution from Mobileye.
However, for intelligent driving, ZEEKR adopts a "two-legged walk" approach, and is also insisting on self-development, and the person in charge, Chen Qi, is the former director of Huawei's autonomous driving R&D department.
In addition, ZEEKR 007 is also changing course, no longer using Mobileye's solution, but equipped with Nvidia OrinX, standing in the NVIDIA ecosystem, and recently confirmed that ZEEKR will be the first to be equipped with NVIDIA's next-generation Thor, with a computing power of up to 2000TOPS.
However, these changes in business direction have not yet been reflected in the equity changes, at least Mobileye will continue to support them in this offering.
In the offering, CATL subscribed for $19.08 million in ADS (American Trust Shares) and Mobileye for $10 million.
And most importantly, with the support of Geely and shareholders, ZEEKR went public smoothly and created a new speed.
Moreover, the significance of the IPO of ZEEKR is not as good as ZEEKR itself.
First of all, ZEEKR is the latest case of successful listing of Chinese concept stocks in the United States, especially those related to advanced technology and manufacturing, in recent years, which may be the beginning of a beginning.
Secondly, ZEEKR is also a traditional automobile giant like Geely, and the success of embracing electrification and intelligence proves that the elephant turns around, and the difficulty and challenges are well known, but since ZEEKR can succeed, it may provide reference and inspiration for SAIC's Zhiji, GAC's Aion, and Great Wall's diversified brands.
Finally, the value recognition of ZEEKR in the capital market can also provide a reference.
For example, Xiaomi's automobile business, which is not independently split, has also driven Xiaomi's overall stock price and market value to rise since the first step has also led to an increase in the market value of Xiaomi's overall stock price, but it is difficult to conclude whether it is undervalued or overvalued without a reference system.
Nowadays, ZEEKR is listed with a market value of 50 billion, and Xiaomi, which has initially succeeded in making cars, has the overall market value of more than 440 billion now been underestimated? Or overestimated?
At least the listing of Extreme Krypton can be regarded as giving an angle.
One More Thing
Finally, as the 9th IPO under the layout master Li Shufu, after ZEEKR, where is the 10th IPO?
The answer is already relatively clear: Cao Cao travels.
The Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that Cao Cao had submitted the statement at the end of April.
Cao Cao Travel is clearly listed in the prospectus, and part of the funds raised will be used to invest in autonomous driving, and will cooperate with Geely to launch L4 autonomous driving vehicles in the future.
At the same time as the IPO of ZEEKR, An Conghui also revealed that the models cooperated by ZEEKR and the autonomous driving company Waymo will soon enter the US travel market, and household products will also be launched in China.
What car?
In terms of exterior styling, it is likely to be the same as the ZEEKR MIX division, which is based on the concept car ZEEKR M-Vision.
The M-Vision is a L4 concept car custom-developed by ZEEKR for Waymo.
This also explains why the first row of MIX supports rollover:
The layout of the MIX after the interior is flipped is very similar to the Origin of the L5 model previously planned by Cruise:
△Cruise Origin车内图,已停产
Robotaxi models are available, and Robotaxi platforms are available.
After the tickets for intelligent driving, Robotaxi tickets, Li Shufu is also ready.