Source: Kanjian Finance
Nenglian Zhidian "fell into danger".
At the close of trading on May 9, Eastern time, the stock price of the former "well-known unicorn" Nenglian Zhidian has fallen below $1 for 7 consecutive trading days, and the latest stock price is only $0.87.
According to the NASDAQ's delisting criteria, the minimum bid price for continued listing is not less than $1. It means that the situation of Nenglian Zhidian is already very dangerous.
As can be seen from the market chart, this wave of decline of Nenglian Zhidian began in April 2023, falling from the highest point of $12.78 all the way to $0.87, with a cumulative decline of more than 93%, and the market value is only $224 million.
How lonely it is now, how glorious it was in the past.
According to the statistics on the official website of Nenglian, from its establishment in 2016 to before listing, Nenglian Zhidian has completed 15 rounds of financing, with a total financing of more than 7.5 billion yuan.
As a new energy unicorn, Nenglian Zhidian was known as "China's first charging service stock", and was once wildly sought after by capital at the beginning of its listing in the United States, with a total market value of 3.3 billion US dollars (about 24 billion yuan), and the market has high hopes for it.
Since 2023, Nenglian has continued to expand its charging service ecology, adding cooperation with Geely, Hyundai, ZEEKR, Wenjie, Great Wall, GAC Energy, Deep Blue Automobile and other OEMs. The cooperative relations established with brands such as "Wei Xiaoli", Jihu and VOYAH have now covered the mainstream new energy OEMs in China.
So, why did the "first share of China's charging service" Nenglian Zhidian come to this?
"Bleeding doesn't stop"
According to the latest news, Nenglian Zhidian officially disclosed its audited annual financial report for 2023 on May 9. But judging from the stock price performance, the capital market does not seem to be satisfied with this report card.
According to reports, Nenglian Zhidian is one of the largest and fastest-growing electric vehicle charging service providers in China. On the one hand, it provides charging services for new energy vehicle owners, and also provides interconnection services for charging operators. At the same time, it also provides one-stop services including site selection consulting, software and hardware procurement, EPC engineering, operation and maintenance, energy storage, photovoltaic, automatic charging robots, etc. for charging pile manufacturers, charging operators, OEMs, enterprises and other entities.
In terms of business operations, financial report data shows that Nenglian Zhidian will complete 214 million charging service orders in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 75%; The annual transaction volume reached 4.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74%.
As of the third quarter of 2023, Nenglian Zhidian has covered more than 767,000 charging guns, connected to more than 73,000 charging stations, and charged 1.383 billion kWh, accounting for 21.8% of China's public charging volume.
Despite the rapid expansion of the business, the capital market is worried about the profitability of Nenglian Zhidian.
According to the financial report, Nenglian Zhidian's annual operating income in 2023 will be 320 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 245%; The net loss in 2023 will reach 1.307 billion yuan. According to Wind data, Nenglian Zhidian has recorded losses for four consecutive years, with a cumulative loss of 7.324 billion yuan.
In the first quarter of 2024, Nenglian Zhidian's losses are still continuing. According to the financial report, in the first quarter, the company achieved revenue of 96 million yuan and a net profit loss of 228 million yuan.
It is worth noting that with the loss of performance, the capital chain of Nenglian Zhidian has become more and more tense. As of the end of the first quarter of 2024, the asset-liability ratio of Nenglian Zhidian has reached 112.5%, which is further improved from the end of 2023 and far exceeds the general warning line of 70%. It means that the financial risk faced by Nenglian Zhidian is relatively high.
Although revenue has achieved rapid growth, it is not difficult to find that the revenue growth of Nenglian Zhidian is highly dependent on marketing expenditure.
According to the financial report data, Nenglian Zhidian's gross profit in 2023 increased by 83 million yuan compared with the previous year, but the sales expenses in the same period increased by 206 million yuan, an increase of more than 100%.
From the perspective of the extended cycle, the marketing expenses of Nenglian Zhidian have been increasing year by year, and the money is constantly burning.
Therefore, the uncertainty of the market's concern is that it is still unknown how much money Nenglian Zhidian needs to "burn" in the future.
"Dangerous situation"
As we all know, the new energy track is in a period of rapid development, with the rapid emergence of new technologies and the rapid change of the market structure.
At present, the competitive environment faced by Nenglian Zhidian seems to be very dangerous.
Compared with the large marketing expenses, Nenglian Zhidian is obviously insufficient in R&D investment, lacking core technology, so it can only rely on acting as a third-party platform to obtain benefits.
The key point in time for the decline of Nenglian Zhidian's share price is August 2023, when Nenglian Zhidian's APP Kuaidian has successively launched VIP customer charging 0 service fee activities in many cities to attract new energy vehicle owners.
This move directly caused dissatisfaction among major charging operators.
It should be introduced that the cost of charging new energy vehicle owners is mainly divided into two parts, one is the electricity fee paid directly to the power grid, and the other is the service fee for the charging station. Among them, service fees are the main revenue of charging operators.
This also means that the most affected by the 0 service fee activity of fast electricity is the charging operator. Sun Xiaoya, an analyst at Tianfeng Securities, said that in terms of the profit margin of a single pile, because the electricity price is basically flat in and out, the difference income is small, and the profit space at this stage basically comes from service fees.
Therefore, Nenglian Zhidian's move instantly angered the charging operator. Subsequently, Telai Call, Star Charging and Cloud Fast Charging collectively announced that they would jointly build a high-quality and stable charging Internet network, and removed about 70% of the charging piles of Fast Electric.
You must know that special calls and star charging are the largest charging operators in China. According to the information of Enterprise Early Warning, as of March 2023, the market share of special calls and star charging enterprises ranked first and second respectively, accounting for about 40% of the total market. In other words, Kuaiden has lost nearly 40% of its total market volume.
Therefore, after this news came out, it was once rumored in the circle that Nenglian Zhidian suffered a "fatal blow".
Although Nenglian Zhidian continues to deny it, the senior management of Kuaidian also emphasized that the impact on the business is less than 10%, and there is almost no impact. But the market doesn't buy it, and since August 2023, the share price of Nenglian Zhidian has plummeted and fallen endlessly.
At the same time, Kuaiden also faces challenges from its opponents. Independent operators of charging piles have set off price wars, and companies such as special calls and star charging have collectively made profits and reduced prices.
Conclusion
Since its establishment, Nenglian Group has expanded rapidly in less than 8 years, and currently has a number of businesses such as Nenglian Zhidian, Tuanyou, Nengcheng Technology, China Energy Chain, and Nengqi Service, which has undoubtedly caught the tuyere of the new energy era.
According to the latest data released by the China Charging Alliance, as of September 2023, the cumulative number of charging equipment in the country is 7.642 million units, an increase of 70.3% year-on-year. Previously, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had proposed the goal of "achieving a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 2:1 in 2025 and a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1 in 2030".
Whether it is market demand or policy, the current prospects of China's charging service industry are still very good.
But the cruel reality is that in the context of crazy leveraged expansion, once the wind changes and the company does not keep up with the rhythm, the situation will be very dangerous.
The current energy chain Zhidian seems to have fallen into a dangerous situation. On the one hand, the industry position of fast electricity is in jeopardy; On the other hand, a new growth curve has not yet been found, and the company's capital chain is becoming more and more tight, and it is unknown whether it can continue to burn money to expand.
Whether Nenglian Zhidian can reverse adversity may only be left to time.