Every entrepreneur has a terrible past, and the same is true of Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile.
In 2019, Weilai Automobile, which has just landed in the US stock market for one year, ushered in the darkest moment. On October 2 of that year, THEI auto share price fell to a minimum of $1.19 per share, a new low since its listing. The stock price has fallen endlessly, the profit is far away, and Weilai Automobile in 2019 can be described as suffering, and Li Bin is even called the most miserable person of the year by the media.
The turning point occurred in 2020, when the highest increase in the stock price range of NIO reached 26 times. Li Bin completely turned himself around with this. Today's Weilai Automobile has become an important force in the global car manufacturing industry. When Weilai Automobile was freed from the sea of suffering, how did Li Bin view the worst days of that period? When there is no way to raise funds, who has reached out to Weilai? A few days ago, Li Bin confided in a public speech for the first time.
The darkest hour of Nio's car
In 2014, after three successful ventures, 40-year-old Li Bin plunged headlong into the car-making track. Under the gray sky of Beijing, Nio Automobile was born. To this end, Li Bin invested all of his $150 million in net worth.
This determination of Li Bin touched lei jun, Liu Qiangdong, Li Xiang, Yu Minhong and other friends in the circle. Yu Minhong even joked, "I invested this money, you want me to make money, if you can't make it, I will kill you." ”
At that time, all investors believed that WEILAI would definitely make money. After all, Li Bin started a business again and took full advantage of the "heavens and times". The so-called Tianshi, new energy vehicles have become the breakthrough direction of China's automobile industry "curve overtaking". The "new energy vehicle promotion plan" introduced in 2013 obviously means that the era of electric vehicles has come.
Driven by the vigorous subsidy policy, China's electric vehicles have suddenly changed. Many companies cheat special subsidies for new energy vehicles through the game of left-handed to right-handed. With the defeat of "ppt car" Jia Yueting to the United States, China's new energy automobile industry has ended the initial stage of rapid progress.
Weilai Automobile, which has been founded for 4 years, has begun to face more and more doubts. Some media recorded Li Bin's embarrassment: when the Weilai ep9 electric supercar was launched, many people said that it was just a "toy car"; when the Weilai es8 was released, some people felt that its price was too expensive and not close enough...
This skepticism and all kinds of smears culminated on September 24, 2019. At that time, Weilai Automobile handed over the second quarter financial report showing that revenue fell by 7.5% month-on-month to 1.5 billion yuan, and the net loss continued to expand to 3.285 billion yuan in the first quarter. Analysts on Wall Street cut NIO's price target from $1.7 per share to $0.9 per share.
Affected by poor performance, on September 24, 2019, WEILAI Automobile's stock price fell by 20.22%. In the following days, Nio's stock price continued to fall, and on October 2, the intraday low fell to $1.19 per share, a new low since listing. Compared with the issue price of $6.26 per share at the time of the IPO, the decline was as high as 80.99%.
With that comes all kinds of negatives about WEILAI Automobile: losses, layoffs, lack of financing, executive departures... Weilai seems to have no future. Li Bin was also called "the most miserable person in 2019" by the media.
Who is Li Bin most grateful to?
When Weilai Automobile was deeply involved in the whirlpool of public opinion and its stock price fell endlessly, its third largest shareholder also withdrew. On February 14, 2020, Hillhouse Capital submitted documents showing that as of December 31, 2019, Hillhouse Capital no longer held shares in NIO.
Before THE LISTING OF NIO, Hillhouse Capital participated in several rounds of financing. When NIO landed on the capital market in 2018, Hillhouse Capital held 7.5% of the shares, making it the third largest shareholder of NIO after Tencent and Li Bin. Zhang Lei, founder of Hillhouse Capital, also publicly expressed his appreciation for Li Bin and Weilai.
Hillhouse Capital's liquidation reduction has undoubtedly made Weilai Automobile worse. On May 30, Li Bin talked about this sad past for the first time when attending an event. He said, "When Weilai was in the most danger, it almost hung up. Anhui Province and Hefei City reached out to us at the most critical time, very grateful to Anhui and Hefei for sending charcoal to us, only the government will look at the long term, and no one in the investment institutions will save us. ”
The reason why Li Bin is grateful to Anhui and Hefei all starts from the beginning of 2020. At that time, Weilai Automobile was already in a life-and-death situation due to the shortage of cash flow. Li Bin returned empty-handed everywhere. In the end, Hefei reached out and signed a 7 billion yuan equity financing with WEILAI Automobile. After the completion of the transaction, Hefei will hold a 24.1% stake in NIO China and NIO will hold a 75.9% stake.
This investment, which was questioned at the time, became a turning point in the fate of WEILAI Automobile. Subsequently, WEILAI Automobile's stock price was like a hanging, from the lowest point of 2.11 US dollars / share in 2020, the highest rose to 57.20 US dollars / share, the highest increase in the range of the year was up to 26 times.
Weilai Automobile, with a market value of 480 billion yuan, once surpassed BMW and Mercedes-Benz to become the world's fourth largest car company after Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen. Some media statistics found that according to the calculation of Weilai China's equity accounting for about 85% of Weilai, Hefei's investment floating profit exceeded 100 billion yuan.
When Hefei rescued Weilai Automobile in danger, Li Bin also returned with a rich return. Isn't this a proper real-life win-win story? For Hefei, through the introduction of new energy vehicle projects such as Weilai, Volkswagen and Chang'an, it has become a sub-city in the domestic new energy automobile industry.
For Weilai, with the investment in Hefei, not only the market value has turned around, but the performance has also begun to usher in an important inflection point. According to the data, in 2020, WEIO delivered 43,728 vehicles, an increase of 112.63% year-on-year; achieved revenue of 16.258 billion yuan, an increase of 107.8% year-on-year; net profit loss of 5.204 billion yuan, down 53.04% year-on-year.
In the past three years, WEILAI has successfully delivered 102,800 vehicles with an average price of 434,700 yuan, which is not only higher than the average price of BMW and Audi, but also exceeds the average price of Tesla China, and has gained a foothold in the high-end camp. In the first quarter of 2021, the gross profit margin of WEILAI Automobile reached 21.2%. This means that Li Bin has been able to "make a profit" by selling cars. Yu Minhong waited for 7 years, and finally did not have to "kill Li Bin".