The Chinese car-making feast still has not ended, and the three men are once again together.
Author I Liu Bo
Report I The daily IPO of the investment community
It was almost Wei to Li Bin.
According to the news of the investment community on August 12, Ideal Automobile was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today, completing the double listing journey. The IPO was issued at HK$118 per share, opened flat at the opening, and had a market capitalization of HK$240 billion. This is another new car-making force that has returned to Hong Kong after Xiaopeng Motors, and it is no accident that Weilai is also on its way.
After the 80s, Li thought that the ideal car is a well-deserved soul figure. As early as 2000, Li Xiang, who was still in high school, began to start a business, he registered Bubble Network and began to operate, and was later acquired; at the end of 2004, he began to start Autohome, and in 2013, he successfully listed on the US stock market. Ideal Auto, founded in 2015, is his third venture.
In the past few years, Ideal Auto has only sold one car, but its annual revenue is nearly 10 billion yuan, and the cumulative delivery volume has reached more than 72,000 units so far. Along the way, the ideal is inseparable from the contribution of many investors behind it, and many well-known VCs/PE have formed a luxury investment lineup, including Mingshi Capital, Lanchi Venture Capital, Source Code Capital, Meihua Venture Capital, Jingwei China, Yuanjing Capital, etc., and it is rare to gather the investment of Wang Xing and Zhang Yiming.
Today, China's car-making feast still has not ended. Xiaopeng and Ideal have returned to Hong Kong for double listing; FF, founded by Jia Yueting, has also successfully listed on the NASDAQ in a surprise; new armies such as WM and Zero Run have rushed to the Science and Technology Innovation Board; Internet giants such as Baidu, Xiaomi, and 360 have collectively run into the car. People come and go, and the flow is endless.
Lee wants to start a business for the third time
Another IPO rang the bell, with a market capitalization of 240 billion
The helmsman behind the ideal car is a post-80s who has started a business three times in a row.
Born in 1981 in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, Li Xiang was very interested in computers in junior high school, and after going to high school, he spent 8,000 yuan to assemble a computer and began to submit articles to various electronic magazines for contribution fees. He also made a personal website, and the advertising revenue alone is more than 10,000 yuan per month. After graduating from high school, Li Xiang made a surprising decision: not to take the college entrance examination and officially start a business.
So in 2000, Li wanted to register his personal website as Bubble.com, working 14 hours a day, so that Bubble.com could quickly become one of the leaders of Chinese IT vertical websites, and was eventually acquired by Shengtuo Media. At the end of 2004, Li wanted to think that he should do something in a new field, so he founded Autohome, and in less than a year, the number of visits entered the top five automotive websites. In December 2013, Autohome was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and Li wanted to successfully harvest his first IPO.
For these two ventures, Li Xiang once commented: "At that time, I did bubble network, the third-rate business in the PC Internet era, at that time, I was not willing, I did the second entrepreneurship, did the auto home, although the car home is far ahead of the first place in the website's income and ranking, this is a second-rate business that is doing relatively well in the mobile Internet, and the past two entrepreneurial experiences are essentially not related to first-class business and business." ”
Therefore, Li wanted to start a business for the third time in his life and chose the "hell mode" in entrepreneurship - building a car. In 2015, Li wanted to resign from his position at Autohome and founded Chehejia, which was later changed to Ideal Auto, and his goal was to build a "company of more than 100 billion US dollars".
However, building a car is a more difficult journey than his previous entrepreneurship, and "burning money" is a hurdle that cannot be bypassed. Ideal Auto has accumulated losses of nearly 4 billion yuan in 2018 and 2019 alone. To this end, Li xiang has implemented a strict cost control method inside the ideal car.
He once revealed that half of the money of the ideal car is spent on research and development, more than 30% of the money is spent on the factory, and only about ten percent is spent on personnel and sales. "The company's administration requires ideal car employees to travel, economy classes must buy the lowest discounts, and economy hotels must live together with two people of the same sex." Lee said in commenting on the reasons for the failure of the Byton car.
In fact, Li Xiang has always been prepared for the difficulties of building a car. At the beginning, he insisted on independent research and development and self-built manufacturing base, invested 5 billion yuan in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, to build a factory, and put into production at the end of 2017. Ideal ONE was officially released in 2018 and delivered on schedule in November 2019. It is worth mentioning that Ideal Auto also set a record of 10,000 new models of new car-making forces in June 2020.
Ideal ONE for 2021
Last July, Ideal Finally sounded the IPO bell on the other side of the ocean, with a latest market capitalization of $29.7 billion. But landing in the U.S. stock market is just a new starting point for the ideal car. In February this year, Li wanted to release an internal letter announcing the "Ideal Car 2025 Strategy": to take 20% of the market share and become China's first intelligent electric vehicle company.
Today, 40-year-old Li Xiang finally ushered in the third IPO bell, ideal car in the form of dual listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the issue price of 118 Hong Kong dollars / share, the opening is flat, the market value of 240 billion Hong Kong dollars.
Only one car is sold for 3 years
A total of 72,000 vehicles were delivered, and 9.4 billion yuan was paid in 1 year
Ring the IPO bell again, what is the ideal car color?
Since its establishment, Ideal Auto has not taken the usual route of pure electric vehicles, but has always insisted on manufacturing extended-range electric vehicles. The advantage is that in addition to charging, extended-range electric vehicles can also maintain power by refueling, so the mileage is longer than that of pure electric vehicles.
On August 1, Ideal Auto just released its latest report card for July this year. According to the data, ideal cars delivered a total of 8589 ideal ONEs in July, and the number of deliveries exceeded 8,000 units for the first time in a single month, an increase of 251.3% over July 2020 and an increase of 11.4% over June 2021. Up to now, the cumulative delivery volume of ideal ONE has reached 72,340 vehicles.
But record deliveries didn't make it ideal for cars to become "ideal" with financial data. According to the prospectus, the revenue of Ideal Automobile from 2018 to 2020 was 284.4 million yuan, 151.7 million yuan and 9.46 billion yuan, respectively; the corresponding net losses were 1.532 billion yuan, 2.439 billion yuan and 152 million yuan, respectively, with a total loss of 4.1 billion yuan in three years. In the first quarter of 2021, Ideal Automobile has lost 360 million yuan, which is 4.7 times the loss of the same period last year.
Among them, R & D investment has become the main reason for the continuous loss of ideal cars. During the reporting period, ideal automobile's research and development expenses in the three years were 794 million yuan, 1.169 billion yuan and 1.1 billion yuan, respectively. In the first quarter of 2021, Ideal Automobile invested even more, burning 515 million yuan in research and development expenses.
For the loss state, Ideal Auto said bluntly in the prospectus that this situation may continue in the future. The Company expects net losses to continue to widen in 2021, primarily due to continued investment in future models and autonomous driving solutions, as well as the expansion of production facilities and sales and service networks.
Fortunately, the ammunition in the hands of the ideal car is still sufficient. According to the prospectus, as of May 31, 2021, ideal auto's cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investment balance was 34.9 billion yuan. Not only that, Ideal Auto is also actively exploring businesses other than selling cars. In the first quarter of this year, Ideal Automobile increased its service revenue by 100 million yuan.
But it is worth noting that Ideal Car has only sold the Ideal ONE model in three years, and the model is obviously too single. According to the prospectus, Ideal Auto will launch a full-size luxury smart range extender electric SUV in 2022 and two other SUV models in 2023. Ideal Is also developing platforms for its future high-voltage pure electric vehicles, Whale and Shark, and plans to launch at least two high-voltage pure electric models per year from 2023.
In May this year, Li Xiang made it clear at a media briefing that "the more money is definitely better, and Ideal Auto does not mind obtaining capital reserves in any way, including capital markets, secondary markets, bank loans, bond issuance and other ways." With the smooth landing of Hong Kong stocks, Ideal Auto is bound to obtain more adequate funds to meet the new "battle" of smart cars.
Behind him gathered an investment group,
Wang Xing and Zhang Yiming both came
Behind the ideal car, there stood a group of investor comrades-in-arms.
Incomplete statistics from the investment community, Ideal Auto has obtained 10 rounds of financing since its establishment, and there is no shortage of well-known institutions such as Mingshi Capital, Lanchi Venture Capital, Source Code Capital, Meihua Venture Capital, Jingwei China, Yuanjing Capital, Meituan, AndteDance and so on.
At the beginning of 2015, Li wanted to find Huang Mingming, the founding partner of Mingshi Capital, and chatted for three hours at the café of Wangjing SOHO, proposing the idea of building a smart electric vehicle. This is in line with Mingshi Capital's internal judgment that smart electric vehicles are the next structural opportunity after smart phones and mobile Internet, and Huang Mingming said on the spot that he would be the first investor.
Mingshi Capital has become the only angel round institutional investor besides Li Xiang and several elders of Autohome. Since then, Mingshi Capital has invested in ideal cars for 7 consecutive rounds, witnessing the birth and growth of ideal cars.
In 2016, Ideal completed the A round of financing, and Meihua Venture Capital, Lanchi Venture Capital, as well as well-known investment institutions such as Source Code Capital and Yuanjing Capital have entered the market.
Zhu Tianyu, managing partner of Lanchi Venture Capital, and Li Xiang met as early as 2014. In the second half of 2016, Zhu Tianyu and Li wanted to talk about travel projects together. Once they met and talked about ADAS, when Zhu Tianyu asked, "How do these companies land?" Can't land on the ground", Li wanted to send out an invitation, "or you come and talk to me to see what we are doing?" After some understanding, Li Xiang's views on future travel impressed Zhu Tianyu and eventually led to this investment.
What impresses Liu Yiran, a partner at Yuanjing Capital, is that "in the multiple rounds of financing of Ideal Automobile, Li Xiang himself will invest in almost every round, and his shares are not only created by entrepreneurship, but also invested." Li Xiang himself said that investing in his own career is the best return. ”
In 2017, Matrix Partners China led the investment in the B wheel of the ideal car, and then continued to increase the number of B+ rounds and C rounds, and was the company's largest VC investor. Zhang Ying, founding managing partner of Matrix Partners China, sighed: "Thank you to the company for allowing Matrix Partners to participate in the business of ideal automobile at the most suitable time, I am very happy and very fortunate to accompany the company to grow together." Wang Huadong, partner of Matrix Partners, said: "I hope that this Hong Kong stock listing financing will help the company achieve its strategic goal in 2025 as soon as possible - to obtain 20% of the market share of New Energy Vehicles in China and sales of 1.6 million vehicles, and continue to promote the continuous development of new energy vehicles." ”
Li Xiang revealed at the US stock listing ceremony of Ideal Auto last year that no one is willing to invest in Ideal Auto in 2019, and he "cheekily" asked 4 good friends who are currently 100 billion US dollars market value /valuation, two of which - Meituan Wang Xing and ByteDance Zhang Yiming finally chose to invest in Ideal Auto.
Here we have to mention another major investor in Ideal Auto - Source Code Capital. Li Xiang is the early LP of Source Code Capital, and Source Code is also the main investor of the A round of Ideal Auto, and continues to increase investment in subsequent rounds. In the process of Wang Xing and Zhang Yiming's investment in the ideal car, the source code played a role in promoting. Cao Yi, the founding partner of Source Code Capital, recalled to the investment community, "At the beginning of 2016, we invested in ideal cars in the A round, and we organized several small partners of the code club to go to the simple and simple small office where they first came to Guangying to communicate. ”
Cao Yi said that Li wanted to do two roadshows at the course activities of the 2017 code meeting, and those two roadshows were very impressive to everyone, and some test driving activities were also organized later, "I think these are all subtly help to help the members of these code clubs to make investment judgments on the ideal car two years later."
For the ideal car, Wang Xing's shot is a heavy bet. In August 2019, Wang Xing personally invested 285 million US dollars, meituan Dragon Ball invested 15 million US dollars, a total of 300 million US dollars to participate in the ideal automobile C round financing, And ByteDance also participated in the investment. In June last year, Wang Xing shot again, and in the $550 million D round of financing obtained by Ideal Auto, Meituan invested $500 million to lead the investment.
In Wang Xing's view, Li Xiang is a potential, visionary and down-to-earth entrepreneur, and the potential of electric vehicles is still in the underestimated stage. "The future will belong to electric vehicles, it will change every industry, and we in Meituan hope to participate in it."
The ideal car does indeed give Wang Xing "fighting for gas". At the end of November last year, Meituan's third-quarter financial report of the year announced that the net profit for the quarter was 6.32 billion yuan, an increase of 374.1% year-on-year, mainly due to the change in the fair value income of the company's investment in listed company entities, totaling 5.8 billion yuan, and most of which was affected by the sharp rise in the stock price of the ideal car in which it invested.
According to the prospectus, in terms of equity structure, Li Wants to hold 23.79% of the shares as the largest shareholder, Meituan holds 13.23% as the second largest shareholder, and Wang Xing personally holds 6.76%. With the successful landing of Ideal Auto in Hong Kong stocks, Li Xiang and Wang Xing's personal wealth will rise again.
Now, only Wei has come
The three men met again in Hong Kong stocks
In 2021, there is no crazy car circle, only more crazy.
During this time, building smart cars seems to have become an aphrodisiac for middle-aged men. On January 11 this year, Robin Li led Baidu to enter the market first, and Baidu and Geely Holdings joined forces to officially announce the establishment of Jidu Automobile. Immediately after, Lei Jun shouted "Fight for Xiaomi Cars" and entered the track. On March 30, Lei Jun officially announced Xiaomi's entry into smart electric vehicles, "This is the last major entrepreneurial project in my life." ”
In addition, the investment community has also exclusively learned that Li Yinan, who single-handedly founded Maverick Electric, has devoted himself to the army of car manufacturing. Zhou Hongyi, the 50-year-old founder of 360 Group, also joined hands with Nezha Automobile to lead the latter's 3 billion yuan Series D financing. Even Huawei, which insists that it will not build cars, has cooperated with three automakers, BAIC BJEV, Changan Automobile and GAC Automobile, to jointly create three sub-brands.
Why are the big guys lining up to build cars? The logic behind the disclosure of investment institutions: smart cars will be very important terminals in the future, just like mobile phones. Because of this, we have seen a scene of the cruel fight of domestic mobile phones in that year, which is about to be repeated on smart cars.
As the three giants of the new car-making forces, the three car companies that have gathered in the US stock market, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal, have reported the dynamics of returning to Hong Kong for listing at almost the same time. Among them, Xiaopeng Automobile, which submitted the prospectus late, has successfully double-listed before the other two companies on July 7, with a latest market value of UP TO 292.5 billion Hong Kong dollars. After ideal cars were listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today, the three giants only waited for Wei to come, and Li Bin was on the way to come.
Why do we have to return to Hong Kong for a second listing? The answer given by He Xiaopeng is: through the dual main listing of Hong Kong stocks, do a good job in capital, technology and talent reserves, and meet the strongest "battle" in the history of smart cars in 2023. In this battle, autonomous driving is regarded by He Xiaopeng as the inflection point of smart cars.
Coincidentally, Li Xiang also said in an internal letter in February this year that the end of the competition for smart electric vehicles is the competition between data and chips. He believes that by 2030, L4-level automatic driving will become the standard of every smart electric vehicle, and users will not choose a smart electric vehicle that does not have the ability to automatically drive. "In terms of automatic driving, relative to Tesla and Xiaopeng, we have to make up lessons, and catch up with their capabilities first, which is the first stage goal." Li wanted to say bluntly that he should catch up first and then catch up.
Ideal Auto's prospectus discloses that it will increase investment in autonomous driving technology, and will independently develop full-stack autonomous driving software to continuously optimize its autonomous driving solutions. Starting in 2022, all new models will be equipped with self-developed L4 level autonomous driving hardware. The dual "Journey 3" chip jointly developed by Ideal Auto and Horizon has been launched by the 2021 Ideal ONE.
The car circle is still bustling. At the end of July, Tesla China announced another price cut - the price of tesla Model 3 standard endurance upgrade was reduced by 15,000 yuan, and the adjusted price was 235,900 yuan, and the delivery time was 4-6 weeks. A week earlier, FF, an electric vehicle company founded by Jia Yueting, completed a merger transaction with PSAC and successfully listed on the NASDAQ, the latest 3.95 billion US dollars (about 25.5 billion yuan), and he also rarely showed his face and said that he wanted to return to China.
Recalling the last day of the Spring Festival holiday in 2019, Li Xiang posted on Weibo, summarizing the five floors he has experienced in the past 20 years of entrepreneurship, "People change because of pain, and people insist because they benefit." "Building a car is a road of nine deaths, and now Li wants to kill it." But from a longer timeline, it's all just the beginning.