Reporter | Zhuang key Edit |
CATL released its semi-annual report on August 25, which revealed mixed feelings of good news.
At the business level, the revenue and profit of CATL in the second quarter of this year hit a new quarterly high after listing.
But also in the second quarter, four of the top ten shareholders of CATL reduced their shares, with a total of 31.81 million shares, accounting for about 1.3% of the total share capital of CATL.
Among them, Hillhouse Capital Management Co., Ltd. - China Value Fund (hereinafter referred to as Hillhouse China) reduced its holdings by 7.98 million shares, and its shareholding ratio dropped from 2.27% at the end of March this year to 1.92% at the end of June. It subscribed for this share of CATL in July last year at a price of 161 yuan per share.
In the second quarter, when shareholders such as Hillhouse China chose to reduce their holdings, the stock price of CATL times went all the way up, breaking through the trillion market value. The company's share price reached 475 yuan at the end of June, nearly three times hillhouse China's entry price last year.
With the soaring market value, the CATL era has become one of the most important weather vanes in China's capital market. In the days to come, it will continue to face similar questions: As a Moutai in the battery industry, can it support the trillion market value opened by the capital market?
The power battery industry where the Ningde era is located is experiencing a year of unlimited scenery. In the first half of this year, domestic power battery loading reached 52.5 gwh, three times that of the same period last year.
The rapid growth of power battery loading this year has benefited from the outbreak of domestic new energy vehicle sales. From January to June this year, the number reached 1.206 million units, also three times that of the same period last year.
In July this year, domestic new energy vehicle sales exceeded 270,000 units, once again setting a record high in a single month. At the same time, the domestic single-month power battery loading reached 11.3 gwh, the second highest level in history, second only to Last December. The loading volume of power batteries from January to July this year has exceeded that of the whole of last year.
From 2019 to 2020, the overall increase in domestic new energy vehicle sales and power battery loading is not significant.
In 2020, China's new energy vehicle sales were 1.367 million units, a cumulative increase of less than 9% in the past two years. The overall growth rate of power battery loading in the past two years is about 12%.
The industry's inflection point emerged in the middle of last year.
Since July last year, domestic new energy vehicle sales and power battery loading began to explode synchronously, and in the following 13 months, they have maintained year-on-year growth and set new records from time to time.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers analyzed at the beginning of this year that after years of cultivation, the new energy vehicle industry chain has gradually matured in various links, while diversified models continue to meet market demand, making domestic new energy vehicle consumption begin to appear inflection point.
In the context of carbon neutrality, the world's major automotive markets are showing similar trends, and optimistic forecasts for the future dominate.
According to the analysis of south Korean industry research agency SNE, the global power battery load last year was 137 gwh, and the number is expected to double on this basis this year. By 2025, the number of power battery installed vehicles is expected to reach 1163 gwh, equivalent to more than eight times the number of last year.
The power battery industry has thus become one of the most certain investment tracks in the eyes of the capital market. On this track, the Ningde era is a frontrunner that cannot be ignored.
CATL was founded in 2011, and the starting point of its rapid development began in 2015.
In March of that year, China issued the "Automotive Power Battery Industry Specification Conditions", which clarified that the development of New Energy Vehicles in China will be dominated by China's power battery manufacturers, and puts forward higher requirements for energy density.
Under this policy, the Ningde era, with ternary lithium batteries as the main technical route, has risen rapidly, and bydirecta, which has lithium iron phosphate as the main technical route, has been suppressed. Because the energy density of ternary lithium batteries is higher than that of lithium iron phosphate.
In 2017, CATL debuted as the global power battery installed champion and landed on the capital market in June 2018, with a market value of about 78.6 billion yuan that year.
In the first floor exhibition hall of the current NINGDE Times Headquarters Base, visitors will notice such a prominent line of text: for every 4 electric vehicles sold in the world, 1 is equipped with the battery of the NINGDE era. More than 70% of the total revenue of CATL comes from the power battery business.
SNE's statistics show that from 2017 to 2020, CATL has become the world's largest company in power battery installation for four consecutive years. The company's revenue scale also increased from 29.6 billion yuan in 2017 to 50.3 billion yuan last year, and net profit increased from 3.3 billion yuan to 5.5 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 70%.
In the first half of this year, the installed capacity of global power batteries in the Ningde era reached 34.1 gwh, ranking first in the list, and its market share was close to 30%, an increase of about five percentage points compared with 2020.
According to the data of the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, the domestic market share of CATL in the first half of this year was also stable at around 50%.
The semi-annual report of CATL times disclosed that the company's revenue in the second quarter of this year exceeded 24.9 billion yuan, and its net profit was close to 3 billion yuan, both of which hit a new quarterly high since its listing.
In the year and a half since its listing, the stock price of CATL has shown a relatively stable trend. It began to rise significantly in December 2019, and reached the 100 yuan mark at the end of December, and has continued to climb since then.
In 2021, the Ningde era ushered in a new wave of market value jump. On May 31 this year, the company's closing price reached 434.1 yuan, crossing the threshold of 1 trillion yuan for the first time and ranking ninth in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets.
The market's valuation of the Ningde era has also diverged.
The day before CATL entered the trillion-dollar market value, Morgan Stanley cut the company's target price by 39 percent to 251 yuan. Analysts believe that the power battery business in the Ningde era is facing pressure from other manufacturers and automobile companies, and the growth potential of the energy storage business is overestimated by the market.
Guosen Securities, which is optimistic about the growth of the company's stock price, concluded in the research report that the market value of CATL this year can be attributed to the high prosperity of the power battery industry and its global leading position in the industrial chain. At the same time, the future potential of the energy storage industry has also provided support for the company's market value jump.
The above research report believes that the energy storage business is expected to replicate the power battery and become the second "growth curve" of the Ningde era.
Last year, the revenue of the energy storage business of the Ningde era was 1.9 billion yuan, accounting for less than 4% of the company's total revenue, but its growth rate exceeded 200%, far higher than the 2% growth rate of the power battery business. In the first half of this year, the revenue of energy storage business was close to 4.7 billion yuan, an increase of seven times year-on-year.
At the end of July this year, the total market value of CATL was close to 1.4 trillion yuan, a new high since its listing.
As of the close of trading on August 25, its market value exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, the fifth largest company in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets, and has increased 15 times in more than three years.
At a forum event in April this year, Shen Nanpeng, global managing partner of Sequoia Capital, asked Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL: Although the battery industry has some competitors, in general, CATL is in a very leading position, your position is too enviable, will there be any anxiety?
Zeng Yuqun did not answer Shen Nanpeng's question head-on. But an obvious challenge is whether caterer can always maintain its leading edge when the battery industry pours in a large number of competitors? That's one of the reasons Morgan Stanley lowered its price target a few months ago.
Accelerating the expansion of production capacity is the answer given by the Ningde era. Since the end of last year, CATL has continuously thrown out large-scale capacity expansion announcements, sending a clear signal to the market that it will continue to broaden its own moat.
In December last year and February this year, CATL announced five battery expansion projects in two parts, with an investment of more than 60 billion yuan. At the performance conference held in May this year, Jiang Li, deputy general manager and secretary of the board of directors of CATL, revealed that the company's total investment in construction capacity has exceeded 90 billion yuan.
CATL currently has six battery production bases, located in Ningde, Fujian, Liyang, Jiangsu, Xining, Qinghai, Yibin, Sichuan, Zhaoqing, Guangdong and Erfurt, Germany, of which Guangdong Zhaoqing is the new production base this year. The company also plans to build new battery plants in Jiangxi and Shanghai.
According to the latest data disclosed in the semi-annual report, as of the end of June 2021, the battery production capacity of the Ningde era was 65.45 gwh, and the production capacity under construction reached 92.5 gwh. CATL did not explicitly disclose its long-term capacity planning goals. However, according to research reports from a number of securities companies, by 2025, the capacity planning target of the Ningde era is close to 600 gwh.
This figure is much higher than the 2025 production expansion target announced by competitors at home and abroad. After five years, lg energy's battery capacity planning target is 430 gwh, AVIC lithium battery's planned capacity is 300 gwh, and SK Group has 200 gwh as the target. They are all currently among the top ten battery companies in the world.
At the same time as the large-scale expansion of production capacity, CATL once again released a plan to raise funds. The Company will raise no more than $58.2 billion by issuing shares to specific targets. More than 70% of the funds raised will be used for the construction of battery production bases.
For CATL, a new round of financing with the current trillion market value is undoubtedly a low-cost measure to improve the capital structure and enhance financial soundness. Its future expansion of production capacity and the strengthening of research and development efforts will require a lot of capital investment.
As of the end of June this year, the asset-liability ratio of catheter times reached 63.67%, an increase of nearly eight percentage points from the end of last year.
Whether the second fundraising after the listing of CATL can be successfully landed will become a touchstone for testing the market's confidence in its stock price.
In July last year, CATL completed its initial non-public offering after listing, raising a total of 19.7 billion yuan, most of which was also used to build a new battery factory. At that time, the issue price was 161 yuan per share, which is equivalent to about one-third of the current stock price.
In this non-public offering, nine investors became the new shareholders of CATL. Among them, the two funds managed by Hillhouse Capital Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Hillhouse Capital) have invested a total of about 10 billion yuan, which is also profitable today.
For potential investors who intend to participate in the new round of fundraising in the CATL era, there are two possibilities for entering the market with the current stock price: becoming a high-level receiver, or the next Hillhouse Capital.
In the second quarter of this year, Hillhouse China, a fund owned by Hillhouse Capital, has reduced its holdings of 7.98 million shares in CATL, accounting for more than 12% of its total shares. Whether Hillhouse Capital has further reduced its holdings in the past two months remains to be revealed in the three quarterly reports of CATL.
After the latest fundraising plan of catheter times was announced, a number of securities companies also issued research reports that continued to be optimistic about the company's stock price.
Soochow Securities raised the target price of CATL to 648 yuan, which is 1.3 times the company's stock price when the fixed increase plan was released. As of the close of trading on August 25, the stock price of CATL was 530 yuan.