"Great Wall Motors is a simple and real enterprise, in addition to being restricted by the listing rules, there is nothing that Great Wall Motors can not say, nothing can not be discussed", recently, when Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, decided to move the originally closed investor conference into the live broadcast room, he chose to face the market with an open and honest attitude.
This is Wei Jianjun's consistent character.
Born in the 60s, he is 60 years old this year, and since taking the helm of Great Wall Motors (hereinafter referred to as "Great Wall"), he has been more engaged in the role of "engineer" and "product manager" than as a boss. With the changes in the industry ecology, traffic has become the focus of efforts, and the low-key Wei Jianjun has to move from behind the scenes to the front of the stage.
Within 40 days after the opening of Weibo, he updated Weibo 27 times, and at the same time started online live broadcasts, including the first connection with Lei Jun Douyin, test drive the Great Wall automatic assisted driving, after several live broadcasts, he admitted that the future live broadcast is like eating, and you can broadcast it if you want.
At this open shareholders' meeting to the market, Wei Jianjun and the executives of the Great Wall appeared together, not only the content was "full of dry goods", from the business philosophy, strategic planning, technical layout to sales targets, and the rhythm of new cars, he almost knew everything, and said everything. What's even more unexpected is that Wei Jianjun's network sense has received unanimous praise, and his sincerity, honesty, enthusiasm, and humor have been affectionately called "Wei Shi" by netizens.
"Wei Shi" has his own cognition of Internet celebrities and traffic, he said that there is still very little traffic, and he should strive to be a high-quality Internet celebrity, "We don't do anything with traffic and no quality." ”
"Do something, don't do something"
In the face of the fierce competition in the auto market, investors are concerned about how the Great Wall should grow, and the answer given by Wei Jianjun is "long-termism".
In his eyes, long-termism is the key to the Great Wall's ability to gain a firm foothold among traditional car companies, and he said bluntly, "In the past, present and future, the company's strategic direction will be based on long-termism." ”
Wei Jianjun explained at the investor conference that it is necessary to keep the bottom line in the current fierce competition, and at the same time give full play to the longboard of the Great Wall.
In the current market environment, plug-in hybrid models are more popular with consumers than pure electric models, and the cost of plug-in hybrid models is also lower and easier to control than pure electric models under the same pricing and positioning.
In this context, Wei Jianjun pointed out, "the current pure electric models are still in a state of loss, last year the industry loss area continued to increase, the Great Wall in the sales of models to make trade-offs, in the face of serious losses of models, we will sell less, no loss, slight loss or higher profit models we vigorously promote." ”
Last year, Great Wall achieved revenue of 173.212 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.12%, and a net profit of 7.023 billion yuan, and in the first quarter of this year, Great Wall achieved a revenue of 42.86 billion yuan, the best in the same period in history, and a net profit of 3.228 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 17 times.
Among them, the average selling price of a single car in the first quarter of the company was about 156,000, an increase of 24,000 yuan year-on-year.
At the same time, as an "old gun" in the industry, Wei Jianjun also put forward his own prediction of the industry, "from this year to 2026, the fierce competition will continue to be maintained", on this basis, Wei Jianjun showed the attitude of the Great Wall in the face of the fierce market, "We must face the next three years with long-termism, and we must have our own hematopoietic ability." ”
Sub-brand sales problems
The questions and answers between investors and Wei Jianjun gradually brought the conference to a climax, and in the face of the outspoken Wei Jianjun, more sensitive issues were raised one by one, including the development of its sub-brands.
Adhering to the concept that multiple children are good at fighting, Great Wall has raised five sub-brands since its establishment, and now the growth is uneven.
When the new energy boom hit, Great Wall launched the pure electric brand ORA in 2018, and then announced a comprehensive new energy transformation of WEY brand in 2022.
At this investor meeting, the development of WEY and Euler was mentioned again. In terms of sales volume alone, the annual sales of the Wei brand last year were only 35,500 units, accounting for 2.8% of the total sales; Ora's annual sales were only 109,200 units, accounting for 8.8% of the total sales, and the performance of the two was not optimistic, especially the Wei brand, as a brand named after Wei Jianjun, and at the same time carrying the mission of the high-end of the Great Wall, the development momentum did fall short of the expectations of the outside world.
At the same time, some investors questioned whether Ola's positioning as a women's car was too niche, and in the face of various doubts, Wei Jianjun said frankly, "Although Ora's niche and small volume, its losses are small." At the same time, about the development of the Wei brand, Wei Jianjun bluntly said, "Our car has never been bad, no matter the performance, NOA, cockpit have done very well", he added, "Wei brand is currently under the Blue Mountain sales are not large, but has done not lose money, we think this is a good change." ”
In addition, in his opinion, the Great Wall is not unable to make good cars, but especially will not promote, "With the brand upward and the model upgrade, we have to solve how to deal with higher-end users, which is the ability that Great Wall must establish." ”
Li Ruifeng, chief growth officer of Great Wall Motors, introduced that last year, Great Wall carried out the deepening adjustment of the organizational model 3.0, such as the expansion of the middle platform to seven, of which the focus is on strengthening the global commodity management middle platform, and the development and research and development of local, domestic and local adaptation of global category brands and product spectrums.
After the adjustment, to a certain extent, the marketing of the five major brands will be delegated, eliminating the cumbersome details in the decision-making process, making the execution simpler and more efficient.
In order to take the sales of high-end brands to a higher level, the Great Wall announced the opening of directly operated stores, Wei Jianjun believes that the dealers of the Great Wall Motors are still selling Wei brand and tanks with the thinking of selling Haval, "The quality of Great Wall Motors' products has been improved, and the dealers have to improve, but the response speed of the dealers is very slow." ”
Therefore, the company chose the May Day interval to open 33 "Great Wall Express" stores in 19 cities across the country, and when the first store opened, Wei Jianjun personally went down to the store as a sales staff.
This year, 500,000 units will be sold overseas
In the face of the intensification of involution in the domestic market, many domestic car companies have set their sights on overseas markets, and Great Wall is also one of them. ”
Shi Qingke said that in terms of brands, to challenge the overseas sales target of 500,000 units, Haval is still the market, with a target sales of 300,000 units, a target sales of 60,000 pickup trucks, and a target sales of 50,000-60,000 tank brands.
As the first Chinese independent brand to go overseas, Great Wall exported pickup trucks to the Middle East as early as 1997, opening the prelude to the brand's going overseas. Over the past 20 years, the Great Wall has gradually formed an "ecological going to sea" system integrating research, production, supply and marketing, and its overseas sales exceeded 300,000 units last year, a year-on-year increase of 85%.
Wei Jianjun believes that China is a policy-driven market, so Great Wall's products have great advantages in going global, including emission safety standards and other standards, which are basically the top in the world, and the current target market is a dimensionality reduction attack.
However, in the eyes of investors, the car companies that go overseas are not the only ones that go overseas, and in the face of more and more enterprises starting to make efforts overseas, whether the Great Wall can resist pressure and whether it can rely on overseas products to stand firm in the overseas market has become the focus of attention.
In this regard, Shi Qingke bluntly said that competition must inevitably exist and there is no way to avoid it, but improving the base and market share of overseas market segments is the principle of the Great Wall when strengthening overseas construction.
He added that Great Wall is not worried about the fierce competition, especially since the overseas model is the best off-road model of Great Wall. Wei Jianjun introduced at the investor conference, "Great Wall's product matrix is the best and most complete, to off-road and off-road, to pickup trucks, to new energy and new energy, while PHEV, BEV, gasoline, diesel all have." ”
At present, Great Wall has completed the layout of the complete new energy core industry chain, including core components such as power battery cells, modules and power semiconductors, which can be independently developed. In terms of fast charging, 4C cells have been developed, 6C cells have entered the verification stage, and 800V high-voltage all-in-one electric drive products will be launched in the future.