Because of the poor sales of Mega, the ideal layoff that has been rumored for nearly two months is officially confirmed.
On May 16, a number of media outlets reported the news of Li Auto's layoffs, with an overall optimization ratio of more than 18%. According to the financial report, there were 31,600 people in Ideal last year, which means that more than 5,600 people will be optimized this time.
In 2023, the total compensation of Li Auto's employees will exceed 12.1 billion yuan, and the average salary per person will exceed 380,000 yuan. With more than 18% of the workforce, this action alone can save more than 2.1 billion yuan.
According to the report, in this optimization, employees in the recruitment department, sales and service operation department and intelligent driving department will be greatly affected.
Specifically, the sales and service operation department will be optimized to more than 400 people, the recruitment department will be reduced from more than 200 people to 40-50 people, and the intelligent driving team will be reduced to less than 1,000 people.
In fact, at the end of March, Li Auto's outsourcing staff was basically laid off.
At the beginning of April, there was already speculation that internal employees would lay off employees, but Li Auto denied rumors of drastic budget cuts and layoffs.
As we all know, Li Auto is the best performing one among the new domestic car-making forces.
In 2023, Ideal will deliver a total of 376,000 vehicles and make a net profit of more than 11.8 billion yuan, making it the third profitable new energy vehicle company after Tesla and BYD.
The good financial performance has given Li Auto the confidence to expand.
At the end of last year, Ideal set a sales target of 800,000 units for 2024, and under this sales forecast, the company's personnel were configured according to the sales expectation of 800,000 units.
As a result, Li Auto has expanded dramatically, and has become the fastest expanding of the new forces. According to the financial report data of various companies, the number of employees of Li Auto at the end of 2023 increased by 63% year-on-year compared with 2022.
The turning point for Li Auto came after the launch of MEGA.
The ambition of the MEGA is to become the "No. 1 model with sales of more than 500,000 units", regardless of energy form or body form. Who knows, its sales in the last month are only 671 units.
The failure of the MEGA even affected the sales of the Ideal L series. Li Li had to lower its full-year target from 800,000 units to 560,000 units.
After the sales forecast was lowered, the corresponding staffing will be reduced, and the layoff plan will be finalized at the same time.
At the end of April, the management approved the final optimization list, and this round of layoff optimization officially started in the first week of May, and most of them will end before the end of May, and N+1 compensation will be implemented for optimized employees.
Li Auto hopes to complete most of the personnel optimization plan before the lifting of the employee stock ban on June 15, which can also save some of the cost of cashing out the shares for employees.
A few more words
The current consensus within Ideal for this year's sales forecast is 560,000 units, and even this figure is still extremely challenging for the current Ideal Auto.
Four months have passed this year, and Ideal has sold a total of 106,200 units, less than 20% of the lowered annual target.
In fact, not only is Ideal laying off employees, but Tesla, the world's most profitable in the field of new energy vehicles, also started layoffs in April. Who will be the next NEV company to announce layoffs?