On May 10, ZEEKR successfully rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange and became the fastest IPO in history.
Before ZEEKR, it took 7 years for Tesla to go public from the initial stage, and it took 4 years, 6 years and 5 years for "Wei Xiaoli" to land on the New York Stock Exchange respectively. And ZEEKR only took half of its time to complete this process, which took only three years.
In fact, it is expected that ZEEKR can be listed in such a short period of time, after all, the listing plan has long been written in ZEEKR's schedule. It is not so much that ZEEKR is pushing the boat along the river and choosing the opportunity to go public, but rather that it is running fast and fast towards this goal, and if conditions permit, it can even be faster.
In April 2021, the ZEEKR brand was officially released to the public, and only a year later, the parent company Geely Automobile proposed the idea of spinning off ZEEKR and listing it independently. At the end of 2022, ZEEKR has quickly filed an IPO registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In November 2023, ZEEKR submitted a prospectus to the United States for the first time, with an estimated financing scale of $1 billion at that time.
Compared with the valuation of the A round of financing as high as $13 billion, such a gap is really unsatisfactory, so the IPO plan of ZEEKR has been temporarily shelved.
According to the Red Herring version of the prospectus updated on May 4 this year, ZEEKR set the IPO valuation at $5.12 billion, with an issue price range of $18 to $21 per ADS, and planned to issue 17.5 million shares and raise up to $367.5 million. On May 8, ZEEKR ended its subscription one day ahead of schedule, and the company has been oversubscribed by nearly 5 times.
It should be said that the current valuation of ZEEKR is seriously undervalued, which is the result of the combined efforts of the long-term downturn of Chinese companies listing in the United States and the cooling of the new energy track. But even so, ZEEKR is also the largest Chinese company in the United States in the past three years.
If the different stages of the development of the automotive industry are compared to game seasons, then we have now entered a new season of competing technology, experience and financial strength, from domestic to overseas. The "second generation of cars" from the big factory is full of Krypton buffs, which can be called the version of the answer to the new season of car building.
Three years to the first extreme krypton speed
ZEEKR has always regarded itself as the fastest-growing new force in car manufacturing, and the speed of ZEEKR runs through its short development process.
After the brand came out, ZEEKR immediately launched its first model, ZEEKR 001, not staying in PPT to build cars, ZEEKR 001 started delivery in October 2021, with a record of 6,007 units that year, and soared directly to 71,941 units the following year, an increase of more than 10 times, and became one of the few car companies that exceeded the annual sales target that year.
It is worth noting that the sales of nearly 80,000 units are mainly contributed by ZEEKR 001, which also means that ZEEKR's explosive strategy has worked.
Therefore, ZEEKR took advantage of the victory and pursued it, and was committed to creating explosive models in multiple subdivisions to enrich the product matrix.
In November 2022, ZEEKR launched its first MPV model, ZEEKR 009, which occupies a dominant position in the MPV market of more than 500,000 units; In April 2023, ZEEKR X, which is positioned in the compact SUV market of more than 200,000 yuan, was launched, and the sales volume of a single model exceeded 10,000 in the past six months, becoming the only Chinese brand among the top 10 sales in this market. Only 48 hours after the pre-sale of the pure electric luxury sedan Zeekr 007 began, orders exceeded 20,000 units.
With the flowering of popular models, the scale effect of ZEEKR has begun to appear. In 2023, the annual sales of ZEEKR will be 119,000 units, and in the first four months of 2024, the sales volume of ZEEKR will approach 50,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 111%, and it seems that it is not difficult to achieve the annual sales target of 230,000.
The most direct benefit brought by the scale effect is the growth of performance. According to the prospectus, in 2021~2023, the total operating income of ZEEKR will be 6.5 billion yuan, 31.9 billion yuan, and 51.7 billion yuan respectively; In 2023, the gross profit margin increased by 10.3 percentage points year-on-year to 15.0%, compared with 18.2%, 9.5% and -1.6% for Tesla, NIO and XPeng in the same period.
Whether it is the speed of model iteration, the start of sales or the improvement of performance, ZEEKR only took half the time of Tesla and Wei Xiaoli, and it is also destined that the IPO process of ZEEKR can be pushed forward at a rapid pace.
Judging from the announced future plans, ZEEKR will continue to accelerate. ZEEKR CEO An Conghui revealed that ZEEKR will launch three new products in 2024. Under the premise of increasing sales volume and gross profit, ZEEKR strives to achieve the goal of turning losses into profits under the Hong Kong Financial Statement Standards in 2024.
An Conghui asserted: "ZEEKR must be the earliest and fastest new energy vehicle company that can make money except for Tesla." ”
The long-term value of the Season Edition answers
Judging from the rapid growth of ZEEKR itself, it is indeed ready for IPO, and looking at the overall development of the automotive industry and the global capital market environment, ZEEKR may be the best time to go public at this time.
According to the data, the penetration rate of new energy in the mainland once exceeded 50% in April, and subversive changes are taking place. On the other hand, in the first four months of this year, a total of 63 new stocks were listed in the U.S. stock market, raising a total of nearly US$13 billion, a year-on-year increase of 220%, and the prosperity rebounded. The inflection point of new energy transformation and market recovery is approaching.
Because of this, ZEEKR is not confined to short-term market value, but attaches more importance to the long-term development that can be exchanged for the secondary market. The long-term value that is not aimed at market capitalization supports ZEEKR to win the largest IPO.
If the "speed of ZEEKR" is only the external manifestation of all the strength of ZEEKR, then what is the internal core motivation to win the largest fundraising so quickly?
The answer is written in the prospectus. In 2021~2023, ZEEKR's R&D investment will be 3.160 billion yuan, 5.446 billion yuan, and 8.369 billion yuan respectively, with a cumulative investment of nearly 17 billion yuan in three years.
With such high-intensity and continuous investment, ZEEKR has built a core technical barrier to electrification. From the three-electric system, pure electric architecture to the energy replenishment network, ZEEKR spares no effort and speaks for the results: more than 240,000 vehicles have been delivered while maintaining a record of zero spontaneous combustion of batteries; The first pure electric architecture, the SEA vast architecture, has landed five ZEEKR models in three years, taking into account innovation and efficiency, and constantly evolving, reducing costs and increasing efficiency; With a variety of mass-produced 800-volt models, self-developed 800-volt brick batteries, and the number of ultra-fast charging piles ranking first in the industry, the whole ecological ...... of ultra-fast charging has been built
And it should also be seen that ZEEKR is standing on the shoulders of giants to move forward, in other words, relying on Geely is an important internal factor that cannot be ignored by ZEEKR to this day.
As a key grasp of Geely's transformation into new energy, Geely fully supports it. The accumulation of experience and technical layout of Geely's multi-brand operation enables ZEEKR to share costs with other brother brands and share supply chains and channels. Geely's rich record of listing multiple brands has also laid the groundwork for ZEEKR to win favor in the capital market, which can be reflected in the entry of big-name investors such as Intel Capital and CATL, and the IPO in the United States in three years.
From the perspective of Geely's strategic planning, Zeekr's entry into the U.S. stock market this time is based on the original intention of increasing the transparency of corporate governance and improving the operational independence and efficiency of its sub-brands. The setting of the landing site as the New York Stock Exchange is a manifestation of Geely's compliance with the trend of domestic new energy going overseas and implementing the policy of basing itself on the world and leading the world.
In recent years, the number of domestic new energy vehicles going overseas has risen, and in 2023, the mainland will jump to become the largest exporter of automobiles. Deeply expand the global market. The time is ripe to lead the transformation of the global automotive industry.
Geely, which has 37 years of global operation experience, has more than one-third of its 120,000 employees in Europe, and overseas revenue will account for nearly 50% in 2023, which will help Zeekr to explore the global market without distraction after landing on the U.S. stock market.
According to the plan, by the end of 2024, ZEEKR will enter the luxury market in 8 European countries, and at the same time enter more than 50 countries and regions such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Australia, exporting products, brands, ecology, and models.