There is a consensus in the NBA: there are no secrets in the playoffs, and each team will study the opponent's offensive and defensive system clearly, and ultimately it will be up to who does the details better.
This is also true in the automotive industry.
Since 2024, the competition of new energy vehicles has become white-hot, technology war, price war, almost all companies have taken out all their energy, who can stay at the last table, it depends on who can do more clearly in the strategic layout, the details are more thorough.
At this point, Great Wall Motors is ahead again.
Recently, Great Wall's annual annual shareholders' exchange meeting was held as scheduled. Unlike most internal shareholders' meetings, Great Wall chose to use live streaming to communicate openly with shareholders, users and even ordinary netizens.
I have to say that only from the formal point of view, Great Wall Motors has been called a precedent in the industry, just as a comment from netizens, "Anyway, there are only a few ideas for the development of new energy, technology research and development, product layout, marketing initiatives, overseas expansion, etc., rather than let everyone guess, it is better to get the bright side, and it can also better let everyone understand the future development form of the enterprise." ”
And so it is. At the shareholders' meeting, Wei Jianjun and a group of executives of Great Wall Motors focused on a series of situations of Great Wall Motors, from bottom-line thinking to long-termism; From intelligent development to overseas strategy; From off-road, to product layout; Great Wall Motors slowly unfolded the strategic details of the future in front of everyone.
For this more than two-hour live broadcast, Wei Jianjun bluntly said that Great Wall Motors is a very simple company, and everything else can be said except for the regulations of listed companies.
The simpler and more sincere, this is the most simple truth.
Making money is the best answer for investors
First of all, it should be clear that the shareholders' meeting is responsible to investors, and what investors are most concerned about? It's to make money, and Great Wall Motors has not shied away.
In 2023, Great Wall Motors will achieve year-on-year growth in a total of eight financial data, including group revenue, net profit, non-net profit attributable to the parent company, overseas revenue, sales volume, new energy sales, overseas sales and the proportion of sales of more than 200,000 yuan.
In the first quarter of this year, Great Wall Motor achieved operating income of 42.86 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 47.6%, and net profit attributable to the parent company was 3.228 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 18 times year-on-year, which can be called the best quarterly report in history.
In the face of the industry's price war, the more you sell, the more you lose, in the face of the common phenomenon of the industry, Wei Jianjun said: "Great Wall Motors has something to do and something not to do. ”
It is an obvious fact that in Great Wall's current product matrix, plug-in hybrid models occupy an absolute dominant position. Plug-in hybrid models are not only the most popular products in the current market environment, but also have lower and more controllable costs than pure electric models under the same pricing and positioning.
In this regard, Wei Jianjun said, for example: "Wei brand Blue Mountain, although the number is not large, but now the product is not loss-making, and the cost and revenue can be equalized; Euler's big sales are less losses, and more losses are burned down, although the niche is small, but the overall loss is not small, and the loss is less. ”
The above explains the main reason why Great Wall Motors has delivered excellent financial figures.
More importantly, Great Wall Motors should strive to give investors longer-term returns, which requires Great Wall Motors to pay more attention to long-termism.
Wei Jianjun and Mu Feng, president of Great Wall Motors, also continue to emphasize: "The fierce competition in 2024, 2025, and 2026 will continue." Therefore, the Great Wall should continue to adhere to long-termism and strive for market share in quality. ”
In fact, Great Wall Motors has always adhered to long-termism. Only by making sustained profits can we ensure R&D investment, and in the face of user demand upgrades, we can produce products that meet consumers. Wei Jianjun once said that every penny paid by the people to the Great Wall Motors is not lacking, and the products and services that the Great Wall Motors give to the people cannot be short of catties.
This kind of rational cognition is undoubtedly a clear stream in the manic voice of the current industry. Wei Jianjun hopes that Great Wall Motors will pursue long-termism, and long-termism itself, the enterprise is to create social value, if it is said that it is a loss, it is impossible to persist in the long run, and it must have its own hematopoietic ability, so the Great Wall must establish long-termism and look at it in the long run.
It can be said that steady and down-to-earth is the development proposition of Great Wall Motors, and the basic logic of "doing something and not doing something" allows Great Wall Motors to continuously release potential energy and move forward in the transformation of the era of new energy vehicles.
Development, we must pursue high quality
It is of course the pursuit of Great Wall Motors to continue to maintain the growth trend of its own financial data, but the long-term way of thinking also determines that Great Wall Motors will inevitably choose a higher-quality development model.
The first is to adhere to category innovation, create a systematic product matrix, and respond to market competition.
Mu Feng said that Great Wall Motors has always insisted on category innovation and insisted on creating distinctive product categories. Great Wall has a category advantage in the field of SUVs, whether it is an urban SUV or an off-road SUV, it is a leader. This is a very important moat for Great Wall Motors. At the same time, Great Wall Motors will not give up the sedan category.
In terms of the layout of new energy products, Li Ruifeng, chief growth officer of Great Wall Motors, said that Great Wall Motors' new energy was originally based on BEVs as the main route, and at present, Great Wall Motors is gradually showing a situation of parallel development of PHEV, EV, range extension and other routes. At present, on the PHEV route, we have formed a parallel route of three brands: Tank, WEY and Haval, and the ORA brand is taking the BEV route.
Wei Jianjun also said that 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, which is also the killer feature for Great Wall to continue to maintain competitiveness.
Indeed, the competition in the new energy market has entered the 2.0 era, and new and old entrants have their own differentiated products. However, in the new round of competition, the competition is not a single product line, but a comprehensive product system competition. The competition pattern of the industry has been changing, and there will be greater variables in the short and medium term. In the face of such a competitive environment, car companies need to build a systematic product matrix.
The second is marketing initiatives, Great Wall Motors actively reforms to respond to market changes.
Li Ruifeng introduced that at the end of 2023, Great Wall carried out a deepening reform of the organizational model 3.0, which not only decentralizes the marketing of the five major brands to a certain extent, but also re-adapts the old communication rules of Great Wall Motors to the laws of the Internet.
Among them, some specific actions include: changing the internal operation model, strengthening the research on various Internet platforms, and the rapid implementation of self-content planning output, and launching a new media live broadcast platform, "In the future, we will build a media matrix of official media, terminal distributors and directly operated stores." ”
As for Wei Jianjun himself, he said: "In the Internet era, the entire team of the Great Wall must establish Internet thinking and master the communication laws of the new era, so I have to take the lead." We are not Internet celebrities yet, we have to strive to be a quality Internet celebrity, without quality traffic, we will not do it. ”
In terms of marketing channels, Wei Jianjun reflected, "Great Wall's products are actually very powerful, but the current problem is that they are not very good at selling cars." ”
In the industry, Great Wall Motor's marketing model has always been a benchmark for learning in the industry, and it is also a magic weapon for Great Wall to maintain market competition for many years. However, in the face of current and future market changes, Great Wall Motors seems to be a little outdated.
As a result, Great Wall Motors established the Great Wall Zhixuan direct sales model, which formed a double-sales model with the previous dealer model.
"The grade of Great Wall Motor's products has been improved, and dealers have to be upgraded, but the response speed of dealers is very slow." Wei Jianjun said, "Great Wall Motors' dealers are still selling Wei brand and tanks with the same thinking as selling Haval, which is not good, and Great Wall must learn to deal with users at the level of Gaoshan on the channel." ”
It can be seen that the era of new energy vehicles is the great era of change, whether it is marketing methods, or channel layout, publicity methods, all of which focus on a "change" word. While sticking to long-termism, Great Wall Motors should change with the times. It's not just about adopting a more flexible approach to chasing traffic, it's about changing from the inside out.
Finally, when asked about Great Wall Motors going to sea, Wei Jianjun, who had nothing to say, once again stated his position:
"Generally speaking, our country attaches great importance to new energy, and we are a policy-driven market today. Therefore, it is very advantageous for our products to go out, and we are very confident. Whether it is emission safety standards or other standards for China's products, they are basically the top in the world, and the target market is now a dimensionality reduction attack. ”
In fact, in addition to its strong product strength and product matrix layout, Great Wall Motors is also constantly promoting the "ecological going overseas", focusing on the "international new four modernizations" of localized production capacity, localized operation, cross-brand culture and supply chain security, and promoting research, production, supply, sales and service to go overseas in an all-round way.
Shi Qingke, vice president and head of overseas business of Great Wall Motors, added, "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. ”
Great Wall Motor's sales in overseas markets in the first quarter were close to 100,000 units. Focusing on the annual overseas sales target of 500,000 units, Haval will occupy 300,000 overseas sales plans, and other brands will also have corresponding layouts. For Chinese brands going overseas, long-termism, bottom-line thinking and quality market share are the benchmarks for Great Wall's overseas development.
It can be seen that Great Wall Motors is running wildly in the right direction. It is not difficult to see that Great Wall Motors is changing from "seeking progress in stability" to "forging ahead".
Epilogue:
Talking about strategy, tactics, and the future, a breakthrough shareholders' meeting allowed more people to understand the diversified Wei Jianjun and Great Wall Motors.
According to the planning of the Great Wall, the next period of time will be a big year for the Great Wall's products. In mid-May, the new Mocha equipped with Hi4 technology will enter the market, and the Blue Mountain Intelligent Driving Edition equipped with full-scene NOA will start batch delivery in the third quarter of this year; At the end of the year, the long-awaited flagship model of the tank brand, the Tank 800 Hi4-T, will also be officially unveiled......
In the future competitive environment, Great Wall Motors, which has polished the details of each ring clearly, will set up a unique banner in this magnificent era of change with a more comprehensive overall situation, a more advanced organizational structure, a more perfect product layout, and more reasonable technical support.
In 2024, perhaps we can really expect the arrival of a new Great Wall. (Written by |Cars have wisdom and fire)