Behind the ideal knife: 98.9 billion cash reserves and 5,600 laid off employees

Car one

2024-05-21 18:52Published in Beijing

Behind the ideal knife: 98.9 billion cash reserves and 5,600 laid off employees

Five days after the "layoffs" Guangjin plan was launched, Ideal announced its financial report for the first quarter of 2024.

Specifically, the total revenue in the first quarter was 25.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36.4% and a month-on-month decrease of 38.6%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 593 million yuan, down 36.26% year-on-year and nearly 90% month-on-month. However, the cash reserves were still held at 98.9 billion yuan, and the overall gross profit margin was also 20.6%.

After the financial report was issued, some people commented: the ideal decline is relative, the reference is the ideal itself, if you use this financial report to compare with other new power companies, the ideal is still the healthiest. In other words, it's just that the top students didn't take the 100 test this time and scored 90 points.

In the face of the same financial report, each individual's state of mind is completely different, some still recognize the ideal market value, while others are full of confusion and anger, especially in the eyes of Hu Li (pseudonym), a former ideal employee who has been laid off by the "Guangjin Plan".

Before the release of the ideal financial report, Hu Li had expectations for the ideal financial situation, and what she was puzzled about was that there was 100 billion lying on the account, and the executives were holding tens of millions of salaries, and the ideal was to "sharpen the knife to the pigs and sheep".

According to Hu Li, if the employee does not sign, HR will threaten dismissal with various harsh terms, including "leaving the workplace for 30 minutes" is also one of the reasons. But the irony is that in the first quarter, due to the lack of workplaces, many employees are mobile offices, which is not consistent with the workstations recorded in the system, and the so-called dismissal clause is actually different from the actual situation.

Therefore, "demining and running" has become Hu Li's last advice to job seekers.

Ideal layoffs, unleashing the butterfly effect

The problem of "insufficient workstations" mentioned by Hu Li was the first to tear open the truth of ideal layoffs.

In 2023, in order to match the sales target of 800,000 in 2024, the ideal will offer a high salary to recruit troops, the high one will reach 39k, and the low one will reach 16k, according to the financial report at the end of last year, there will be 31,600 ideal employees at that time, an increase of 63% over the previous year. However, the ideal sales volume in the first quarter of this year was 80,400 units, and the sales volume in April was 25,800 units, which is still 693,800 units away from 800,000 units.

The performance pressure, which is far lower than expected, has undoubtedly made the manpower allocated in advance redundant. Xiao Xiang (pseudonym), who once jumped from a traditional luxury head company to Ideal, told us that in March, Ideal lowered its sales target (from 800,000 to 56-640,000), and the extra people were laid off.

"Internet companies are like this", Xiao Xiang said, the ideal will always be based on the preset goals in advance to arrange production capacity and human resources, once it is not reached, it is inevitable to lay off employees, a certain automotive vertical media, Li Xiang has been at the helm of the company, are the same.

Although the ideal "big knife" has not yet fallen on him, the waiting process is even more torturous. "I am trembling every day", recalling his previous work experience in a foreign company, Xiao Xiang felt "a little regretful coming out of a foreign company".

The action of layoffs started quietly, and many ideal employees only learned about the news through the media, but in Hu Li's eyes, they did not admit that they were laying off employees, and this behavior did not dare to agree. In addition, this wave of layoffs is not only large-scale, ruthless, and lasts for a long time, Xiao Xiang revealed: Beijing headquarters sales have been laid off in April, after May Day, more than 200 people left, last week's product department layoffs of 30%, Shanghai, Changzhou is still in progress, about the end of May.

According to calculations, according to the 18% layoff ratio, the ideal will lay off a total of 5,688 people this time, but some industry insiders analyze that this data may still be conservative. According to a number of sources, Che Yitiao learned that the hardest-hit areas of the layoffs involved intelligent driving, from 2,000 to less than 1,000 people, three-quarters of the recruitment department, from more than 200 people to 40-50 people, 400 people in the sales and service operation department, about half of the government public relations cuts, and the MEGA line optimizes the largest number of business lines.

"The manpower responsible for the recruitment of the MEGA model, only one manager is left, and the manpower of other models is still there", an employee who temporarily works for the ideal revealed on social platforms. Someone jokingly commented: A lawyer's letter warning will come. The reply was: "The legal department has been laid off, who has the heart to send a lawyer's letter?" ”

In this round of layoffs, some media said that the ideal will be relatively protective of school enrollment considering the social impact, but in fact, there are not a few school students who have been laid off.

In addition to actively looking for a way out, there are also traditional enterprises like Chery that are investing heavily in new energy to publicly cast an olive branch to ideal employees, base Wuhu, from the autonomous driving department, thermal management development department, product development department and other positions are vacant.

Interestingly, the ideal layoff not only affected the employees themselves, disrupted the flow of talent in the industry, but also had an impact on the Shunyi rental market, "people go to empty buildings, and rent prices also fall", an apartment manager has begun to post rental posts on the Internet, in order to shorten the vacancy period of his own housing and welcome the arrival of the next wave of tenants as soon as possible.

Pure electric postponement, ideal thought

Layoffs are irreversible, but the ideal must continue, after adjusting the organization. The focus is to face up to the current predicament, reorganize the business ideas, and at least go through Q2, the most difficult quarter of the year.

At the results conference on the 21st, the ideal adjusted target for the second quarter is 105,000-110,000 units, and if it is estimated according to the minimum value of 105,000 in the second quarter and the minimum annual target of 560,000, in the second half of 2024, the ideal must reach at least 374,600 sales in order to barely achieve the overall target of 560,000, and the average task of about 62,400 units per month will be completed.

At present, this heavy responsibility falls directly on the L6, L7, L8, L9, because at the beginning, the MEGA, which was expected to sell 80,000 units a year, completely died down, and only 1145 units were sold in April, ranking 21st in MPV sales.

Some people in the industry believe that this situation is an inevitable phenomenon, and the reason is not only the appearance design that has been scandalized by netizens, but also the inaccurate product positioning, power form matching deviation and other omissions, "As a pure electric MPV with a price of more than 500,000 yuan, it is too expensive for home use, and there is battery life anxiety for business use, which can be compared with the good MPVs sold on the market, such as Denza D9, Grevia, Senna, none of which are pure electric products." ”

"The follow-up pure electric model also looks similar to MEGA, although it is not a nesting doll, but it is estimated that it is difficult", Xiao Xiang's prediction became a prophecy at the performance conference on the 21st.

The two pure electric SUVs M8 and M9 originally planned to be released this year, as well as the overall pure electric planning will be postponed, Li Xiang said: no pure electric products will be released this year, and will be placed in the first half of next year. In his opinion, not enough self-operated supercharging piles and not enough store booths are the barriers to Li Auto's sales of mid-to-high-end pure electric SUVs.

According to Li Xiang's plan, the number of supercharging piles should be equal to that of Tesla China, and 500-600 new store booths should be added across the country. Otherwise, there is a problem of increasing the number of products without increasing sales.

In addition to the measures related to the supporting construction of pure electric products, in order to increase sales and maintain stable performance, in addition to layoffs, a team dedicated to quality operation was also set up in this organizational adjustment. In Li Xiang's view, "allowing the business to focus on making high-quality decisions and improving the efficiency of execution, instead of spending a lot of time on repetitive operational work, is the most fundamental change this time." ”

Looking back at Li Xiang's optimistic forecast for MEGA sales two months ago, and when MEGA deliveries began, Li Xiang's pie for employees to "let factory employees get the same level of income and achievements in Japan, Germany and other countries" seems to have come to naught.

Affected by the failure of MEGA, it may be difficult for Ideal to achieve "pure electric and extended range left and right bow" in a short period of time. And the cruel reality is that many companies have chosen to lay out the extended range market, in addition to the Star Era ET and other models that were launched not long ago, according to media reports, Xiaomi has also begun to develop the platform of extended range hybrid.

The competition will only intensify indefinitely, and the existing L series products of the ideal may not be able to support the goal of 60,000+ monthly sales, and it remains to be considered whether pure electric products can provide performance support next year. But for Li Xiang, time is running out.

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