Lei Jianping on May 15
Lidar company Hesai (stock code: HSAI) recently announced that Xie Dongying, the company's CFO and director, has resigned due to personal and family reasons.
Xie Dongying is legendary in the CFO profession, and has promoted the listing of New Oriental, NIO and Hesai on the US stock market, and is known as the "Godfather of CFO".
Xie Dongying was the CFO of New Oriental, joined New Oriental in 2005, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on September 7, 2006. At that time, New Oriental went public in the United States, not only because of the domestic policy on private education at that time, but also because of the development of the red-chip structure, and Xie Dongying became famous.
In May 2017, Xie Dongying joined NIO as CFO, responsible for NIO's financing and listing projects, and in September 2018, NIO was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, making NIO the first new EV manufacturer to go public in the United States. In October 2019, Xie Dongying resigned from NIO.
In 2022, Xie Dongying, who was already financially free, joined Hesai as CFO and oversaw Hesai's IPO, which was listed on the NASDAQ in March 2023, becoming the first LiDAR stock in China.
Xie also serves on the boards of Yum China, JD.com, and other companies.
As a Wall Street elite who has created many legends in the workplace, Xie Dongying's rich experience in the CFO industry is undoubted, and it has also provided great help to Hesai's listing.
He has led New Oriental and NIO to be listed on the U.S. stock market
Xie Dongying once talked about going through three IPOs in her career, saying that none of them were easy.
Xie Dongying said that after working in Silicon Valley for more than ten years, I wanted to return to China for development due to family reasons. At that time, New Oriental was looking for a CFO, and under the recommendation of a headhunter, he and Yu Minhong hit it off at first sight in Vancouver. Yu Minhong invited Xie Dongying to help the company go public. This is a completely new field and a new challenge for Xie Dongying: not technology, finance, and law, but education. "I knew that China's economy was rising rapidly at that time, and it was a market full of opportunities. In almost every consumer sector, China will become the world's largest market. ”
At that time, everyone around Xie Dongying felt that it was very risky to choose New Oriental, after all, the education industry was still an emerging industry in China at that time, and compared with the glamorous financial industry in which it was located, the future was uncertain. But Xie Dongying chose to join New Oriental and lead the company to go public.
"After working for New Oriental for ten years, I tried to retire for the first time. But within a year, I found that I enjoyed my career breakthrough more than my free time. So I started looking for a new job. One of the companies that interested me at the time was NIO. This is the second IPO experience. ”
Xie Dongying said that at that time, there were dozens or even hundreds of electric vehicle companies in China trying to "build cars", and NIO was the closest company to have a real model product at that time, but the company also urgently needed more money to support the development and launch of the model.
NIO's board of directors was very strong, Li Xiang and Lei Jun were there at that time, and the company had excellent products and excellent people. So Xie Dongying joined NIO and helped NIO complete the C and D rounds of financing. However, it was not easy to build a car from scratch to get the model finally on the market, and it required a lot of financial support, and the company at that time had been losing money for four years.
In 2018, NIO once again encountered the worst time in the capital market, with many emergencies, but NIO still successfully listed NIO on September 12, with a market value of $6.5 billion, and then the product was successfully released and the stock price rose.
Xie Dongying pointed out, "Time has proved that my judgment at that time was correct, and now, electric vehicles are, or have changed, the world. ”
Hesai paid a huge cost to recruit Xie Dongying
Hesai also paid a lot of money to recruit Xie Dongying. As of February 29, 2024, Hesai's co-founder and CEO Li Yifan and CTO Xiang Shaoqing each held 7.8% of the shares and had 24.9% of the voting rights. Sun Kai, co-founder and chief scientist, holds 8% of the shares and has 25.7% of the voting rights;
Hesai's shareholding structure as of February 29, 2024
Xie Dongying holds 1.6% of the shares and has 0.5% of the voting rights.
Hesai's management holds 25% of the shares and 75.7% of the voting rights. It can be said that Xie Dongying is the company with the largest number of shares at the individual level, except for the three co-founders of Hesai.
Prior to joining Hesai, Norman Fan had worked at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu for 16 years. But Norman Fan is far from Xie Dongying in all aspects such as seniority and influence.
Of course, for a professional CFO like Xie Dongying, the task of helping the company go public has been completed, and it is inevitable that he will retire after success.
The annual revenue of 1.877 billion is still in trouble
In recent years, Hesai's business has been growing rapidly.
According to the annual report, Hesai's revenue in 2021, 2022 and 2023 will be 720 million yuan, 1.2 billion yuan and 1.877 billion yuan (about 264 million US dollars) respectively, and the operating loss will be 265 million yuan, 378 million yuan and 572 million yuan respectively. Operating margins were -36.8%, -31.4% and -30.5%, respectively.
Hesai's net losses in 2021, 2022 and 2023 will be 245 million yuan, 300 million yuan and 476 million yuan respectively. Net profit margins were -34%, -25% and -25.4%, respectively.
As of December 31, 2023, Hesai had cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments of RMB3,144.1 million (approximately US$442.8 million), compared to RMB3,207.1 million as of September 30, 2023.
However, Hesai's development has not been without its challenges. On January 31, 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense announced an update to the list of "Chinese military-related enterprises" and added Hesai to the list, and recently Hesai also sued the U.S. Department of Defense.
Hesai said in a statement that the company believes the decision was wrong, unfair and unfounded. In order to protect the company's reputation, Hesai decided to sue the U.S. Department of Defense to defend the company's legitimate rights and interests.
Hesai also stressed that it has no business dealings with the military of any country; Hesai's LiDAR products do not have the ability to transmit data wirelessly, nor can they store point cloud image data for more than one second internally, both of which have been certified by TÜV Rheinland and Deka, two German third-party organizations. Hesai is a publicly listed, privately held company that has never been subject to any government interference or received any government equity investment.
As of today's close, Hesai's stock price was $5.32, with a market capitalization of $678 million.
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Lei Di was founded by Lei Jianping, a media person, if it is reprinted, please indicate the source.