After Wei Xiaoli, ZEEKR became the fourth Chinese car company to IPO in the United States.
The issue price was $21 per share, the opening price was $26 per share, and the highest price of the day was $28.26 per share, up 35% according to the issue price and 8.7% according to the opening price, ushering in a good start. As of May 18, the price of Zeekr's U.S. stock was $26 per share, falling back to the opening price.
If the beginning of ZEEKR's IPO makes people see the hope of the electric vehicle industry, other car companies listed in the United States, as well as the subsequent stock price changes of ZEEKR, show that relying solely on electric vehicles cannot boost market confidence.
Auto-related U.S. stocks have not been doing well lately
ZEEKR's IPO was described by the industry as a "bleeding" listing.
First, on the first day of listing, the market value of ZEEKR reached 6.898 billion US dollars, and in the last round of financing before the listing, the valuation of ZEEKR has been as high as 13 billion US dollars, and after listing, the market value has been halved; second, in this IPO, ZEEKR has significantly lowered its expectations, and the amount of funds raised has been lowered from the previous 1 billion US dollars to 370 million US dollars;
We will not discuss whether the timing of the listing chosen by ZEEKR is right, but at least for now, the benefits of ZEEKR IPO still outweigh the disadvantages.
According to the prospectus, the net losses of ZEEKR from 2021 to 2023 will be 4.51 billion yuan, 7.66 billion yuan and 8.26 billion yuan respectively, and by the end of 2023, the asset-liability ratio of ZEEKR will reach 132%, due to large-scale investment in R&D and sales.
Fortunately, ZEEKR can also guarantee revenue and gross profit margin. In 2023, ZEEKR's gross profit margin will reach 15%, which is second only to Ideal at 21.5% among the four car companies listed in the United States, while slightly lower than the 18.2% of another American company, Tesla, but significantly higher than the 9.5% and -1.6% of NIO and Xpeng. That is to say, ZEEKR does not lack hematopoietic ability, what is currently lacking is the ability to continue to inject capital into technology research and development, and when new energy vehicles enter the stage of knockout and brand solidification, ZEEKR, which seeks rapid development, chooses to be listed at this time.
An Conghui said that the listing of ZEEKR is a strategic consideration, and the entire plan was determined at the beginning of its creation, and as a global brand, it needs to face the global market, global users, global technology and global capital.
Judging from the current situation, part of the reason for ZEEKR may be that it sees that the sales volume in the domestic market is in the climbing stage, as well as the future market strategic goals and market competition trends, and there is always a feeling of being pushed forward by the market.
Except for the stock price of ZEEKR a week after the US IPO, the stock price fell back to the opening price, and other U.S. stock car companies have not had a good time recently.
Tesla's stock price has fallen 28.58% year-to-date, and the reasons for its ups and downs are clear to everyone. A series of positive and unfavorable news, such as global price increases, global price cuts, global layoffs, financial reports falling short of expectations, estimated revenue and profit sales this year, as well as new affordable models, FSD global landing and technology trends, and robotaxi as the mainstream technology direction, ultimately led to the results.
That said, at least this year, the market is not optimistic about Tesla. How will Tesla's stock price change in the future, first, whether FSD, which has just made significant progress, can be implemented in many regions around the world, second, what kind of subversive content can be brought by robotaxi in August, third, whether the affordable car Model 2 is progressing smoothly, and fourth, whether the end-to-end intelligent driving solution composed of pure vision and AI large models can lead the industry again. Tesla is basically in a state of open card this year, and whether it can maintain its position as a leading pure electric vehicle company depends on its own development.
Another Chinese new energy vehicle company, Li Auto, which performed well last year, has also encountered major problems recently. First, there was a problem with the rhythm of the product, sales fell short of expectations, and then the news that it would lay off 18% of the workforce, and then in the U.S. stock market, it was accused of exaggerating market demand and was subject to a U.S. stock class action lawsuit.
The exaggeration of market demand refers to the previous publicity of Li Auto's market expectations and orders for MEGA, which has made the capital market have high expectations. The final outcome is clear to everyone, but the lawsuits that the ideal receives are not uncommon in the United States, and most of them end in reconciliation.
Tesla has a new move, intelligent driving is more important than the car itself?
This year's Tesla, although it has suffered a heavy setback in the U.S. stock market, is still the vane of the development of the industry. When in the automotive field, Musk can't find a good path to promote capital, so he has to find another way.
On May 17, Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that Tesla is accelerating plans to use data generated in China to help the global development of its self-driving system at a time when the U.S. government is trying to restrict the transfer of artificial intelligence technology by U.S. companies to China.
Musk's purpose in coming to China last month, in addition to the opening of the FSD region in China, also hopes that Tesla will get approval from Chinese regulators to transfer the data of the production of cars running in China abroad for use in training its FSD system. Previously, Musk also expressed his desire to send Chinese data abroad to train FSD, but it was not approved.
Tesla also wants to build a data center in China to train the algorithms needed for a more complete FSD, according to people familiar with the matter.
It is not difficult to see from a series of actions that although there are still urgent problems to be solved in the field of batteries and other fields for electric vehicle technology, the current outlet is artificial intelligence-led intelligent driving.
We all know that Tesla's pure visual intelligent driving, coupled with an AI large model, is called an end-to-end intelligent driving solution, and its advantages and disadvantages are relatively obvious. The advantage is that the pure vision solution only requires a camera, does not require lidar and complex programming maintenance, is cost-effective and inefficient, and can train the vehicle to be an anthropomorphic driving style. The disadvantage is that in extreme weather conditions, pure visual vision can be obstructed; More importantly, end-to-end intelligent driving requires a large amount of high-quality and effective data. In other words, tens of millions of kilometers or hundreds of millions of kilometers of driving data may not be able to fully train artificial intelligence to complete reliable driving.
Therefore, Tesla is in urgent need of data support, and China, as a region with relatively complex roads, changeable road conditions and changeable driving conditions, is very suitable for Tesla to train FSD, and it is not difficult to understand Tesla's urgent desire to transfer China's driving data abroad.
Another important reason is the issue of profitability. As mentioned above, the cost of end-to-end intelligent driving is lower, and the follow-up maintenance cost is lower than that of the modular intelligent driving solution of LiDAR, which means that end-to-end intelligent driving is more profitable. In contrast, Tesla's FSD selling price is almost the most expensive in the industry, even if the price needs to be reduced in the future, compared with the price system based on the LiDAR intelligent driving solution, there is also a lot of room for operation, and the LiDAR solution is reduced to the same price, or the end-to-end profit is higher, and the realization effect is not inferior to the LiDAR solution.
In other words, Tesla, which will have a declining gross profit margin in 2023, needs to start with intelligent driving when the whole vehicle cannot achieve a profit breakthrough. FSD's entry into China and the layout of robotaxis are the key to whether Tesla can improve its profit level.
The characteristics of the stock market are that whether the company can develop positively is an important evaluation goal, and profit is the most important thing. It is not difficult to understand why the two car companies, NIO and Xpeng, have fallen by at least 80% from the highest position in 2021 after their IPOs in the United States.
epilogue
Electrification not only opens up the change between fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles, but also opens an era of automobile diversification. The focus of car companies is not only on the car itself, but also on the core technology derived from the car in the future, which is the indispensable core competitiveness of the enterprise. In the future, potential automobile companies need to involve multi-dimensional technological development in order to gain the favor of capital, relying only on a brand label, unless there is the ability to break the industry, otherwise it is difficult to obtain market recognition.