Wen 丨 zinc scale, author 丨 Chen Deng Xin, editor 丨 Meng Huiyuan
The Ningde era, with a market value of trillions, is moving faster and faster on the road of chopping hands.
From February to October 2021, CATL has invested or participated in the establishment of 8 private equity investment funds with a total amount of more than 2.8 billion yuan, and the investment direction of the above funds covers lithium batteries, new energy vehicles, chips, energy storage, consumption, medical health, new materials and other fields.
In addition, it is more frequent to compete for lithium, phosphorus and other resources upstream of power batteries.
The latest move is to invest no more than 32 billion yuan in Yichang City, Hubei Province, the "phosphorus capital", eager to lock in the phosphorus source of lithium iron phosphate, an important raw material.
However, behind the purchase, buying and buying, hidden worries have gradually emerged: on the one hand, the market value has soared by leaps and bounds, and the winning capital market has continued to applaud; on the other hand, the investment burden has increased, so the huge financing has been questioned by the outside world.
In this way, under the high light, the dark tide surges.
The Ningde era in the capital market can be described as a fish in the water.
According to the data of Flush, as of June 31, 2021, the number of institutions holding the Ningde era was 1972, with a cumulative holding of 1.377 billion shares, an increase of 71.17% from the previous month; correspondingly, the number of institutions holding Guizhou Moutai was 2269, with a cumulative holding of 987.5 million shares, a decrease of 0.35% from the previous month.
Capital market, Ningde era and Guizhou Moutai shoulder to shoulder
Behind the increase and decrease is that the Ningde era won the title of "King of Ning", gained a pivotal position in the capital market, and really envied others.
In addition to reaching the top, the large-scale investment of the Ningde era has also become the focus of the capital market.
For example, before the "Ten·1", CATL first injected 240 million US dollars to acquire a 24% stake in the lithium mining project manono in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Africa, which has an annual output of 700,000 tons of lithium oxide, and then acquired a 100% stake in the Canadian lithium mining company Millennial for 377 million Canadian dollars, which owns two world-class lithium salt lake projects in Argentina, with a total of about 4.12 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent.
More critically, the latter acquisition was taken from Ganfeng Lithium, an upstream company for power batteries, for which NINGDE paid a termination fee of $10 million instead of millennial.
This means that the relationship between NINGDE times and Ganfeng Lithium has undergone subtle changes, from a simple cooperative relationship to a complex competitive relationship.
For example, on October 12, CATL announced that it intends to invest no more than 32 billion yuan in Yichang City, Hubei Province, the "Phosphorus Capital", to build an intensive and large-scale production base with waste battery material recycling, lithium iron phosphate and ternary precursors, lithium iron phosphate, lithium cobalt oxide and ternary cathode materials, graphite, phosphoric acid and so on.
Among them, the integrated battery material supporting chemical materials phosphoric acid, sulfuric acid and other raw materials construction projects are planned to cooperate with Hubei Yihua, which generously invests in phosphate ore.
Behind the phosphate ore resources, the cumulative loading volume of lithium iron phosphate batteries has continued to exceed ternary lithium batteries in the past three months, and the trend of anti-overtaking is visible to the naked eye, and the Ningde era is planning to take precautions.
In this way, the left "phosphorus" and right "lithium" layout has become.
In this context, the outside world has a very different attitude towards buying and buying in the Ningde era, and the bullish and bearish views are tit-for-tat and do not give in to each other.
Bulls believe that they can seize the industry's high ground.
According to the data of the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, in September 2021, China's power battery loading volume was 15.7gwh, up 138.6% year-on-year; from January to September 2021, China's power battery loading volume was 92.0gwh, up 169.1% year-on-year.
The demand is strong, stimulating the Ningde era, Yiwei lithium energy, hive energy and other large and small players continue to increase.
According to data from gaogong lithium battery, in the third quarter of 2021, it was announced that the planned production capacity of lithium battery projects was as high as 385gwh, with a total investment amount of about 165 billion yuan, while the total investment amount of the lithium battery industry chain in the first three quarters of 2021 has reached 884.6 billion yuan.
Downstream increase, upstream price increase.
Since 2021, lithium metal has risen by more than 75%, lithium iron phosphate has risen by more than 110%, lithium carbonate has risen by more than 230%, taking lithium carbonate as an example, the current price is 180,000 yuan / ton, while at the beginning of the year it was only 53,000 yuan / ton, last August was only 40,000 yuan / ton.
In other words, the Ningde era needs to race with competitors on the one hand, and on the other hand, it also needs to hedge the price increase of upstream raw materials.
An Internet observer told Zinc Scale: "This move in the Ningde era is also forced, the price of raw materials upstream of lithium batteries continues to rise, and the pressure of price increases is transmitted along the supply chain, and the downstream pressure is becoming more and more serious, so it has the motivation to break the current supply chain pattern and seek to dominate." ”
In short, in order to seek competitive advantage and grasp the core discourse power of the industry, it is imperative for the Ningde era to advance upstream, otherwise if the supply chain is contained, it may face the risk of being eliminated, so it is natural that continuous large-scale investment is also a natural thing.
Layout lithium batteries can achieve initial results
Bearers believe that risks are constantly gathering.
At present, the industry is in a high-boom stage, the risk of rapid expansion has increased sharply, an accidental or planted head, in 2018, the Ningde era participated in the B round of financing of Byton Automobile b round of 500 million US dollars, the latter after several tosses but can not change the fate of the fall, and the investment of the Ningde era is naturally adrift.
According to public information, CATL has invested more than 40 times around its upstream and downstream industrial chain, involving Aichi Automobile, Horizon, Xinchi Technology, Hello Power Exchange, Cloud Fast Charging, etc.
A private equity official told Zinc Scale: "Tianqi Lithium, one of the 'two males' of the lithium mine, is because of the acquisition of Chilean sqm company at the peak of the industry boom of $4.2 billion, stepping on the wrong rhythm and thus collapsing, and now it has just eased up, and this lesson is in front of us." ”
The above-mentioned private equity person further pointed out that the current frequent attack on upstream resources in the Ningde era is similar to the actions of Tianqi Lithium In that year, which is a long-term test for its capital flow, and the generous hand now does not mean that it will always be wide in the future.
What's worse is that with the strong entry of the Ningde era, the upstream resource battle for power batteries has been further intensified, and the industry has become more and more involved.
In fact, the frequent chopping of hands has had a certain impact on the capital flow of the Ningde era.
According to the 2021 interim report, the total liabilities of CATL were 132.295 billion yuan, an increase of 139.30% year-on-year; current liabilities were 92.690 billion yuan, an increase of 161.34% year-on-year; the asset-liability ratio in the second quarter was 63.67%, both year-on-year and month-on-month, and there was a significant increase; short-term borrowings were 7.936 billion yuan, an increase of 193.78% year-on-year.
As of September 30, 2021, the balance of ningde times borrowings was 46.08 billion yuan, an increase of 16.752 billion yuan over the end of 2020, and the cumulative new borrowings accounted for 24.21% of the net assets at the end of 2020.
In fact, the Ningde era also knew the stakes.
On August 12, 2021, it issued the "Preliminary Plan for issuing shares to specific targets", which intends to raise no more than 58.2 billion yuan, of which 9.3 billion yuan will be used to supplement working capital.
In this regard, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued a regulatory letter, expressing concern about its continued large-scale foreign investment and questioning whether there is excessive financing.
"Combined with the gap in operating funds and R&D investment during the reporting period, it shows the necessity and rationality of the scale of the funds raised from this offering to supplement working capital and R&D projects." This is required in the regulatory letter.
The gross profit margin of the Ningde era is decreasing year by year
It can be seen that the Ningde era may need to think coldly.
In fact, taking a high and playing this move is not what the Ningde era wants, but is actually forced by the competitive situation, and opponents at home and abroad are struggling to catch up, making them like a man on their backs.
In China, the former defeated BYD, with the performance of lithium iron phosphate batteries to break through the comeback, and posed an aggressive posture, everywhere with its tit-for-tat confrontation, the two sides around the safety of the power battery has been exchanged for many times.
After all, BYD has a deep foundation in lithium iron phosphate batteries and has high patent barriers, which is particularly eye-catching in lithium iron phosphate batteries once again standing on the "outlet".
In foreign countries, lg new energy and Ningde era are in competition, not only becoming the main supplier of Tesla, but also widely deployed in the global market, compared with the latter more dependent on the domestic market.
According to SNE research data, from January to August 2021, the share of the global power battery market, catheter era was 30.30%, and the share of lg new energy was 24.5%.
All in all, under the intensification of competition, raw material prices and other factors, the Ningde era chose to break the situation with high-speed expansion and seek to cross the production capacity gap, which is a road full of thorns, an inadvertent or fallen altar.
In this regard, an analyst at Huatai Securities said in an interview with Zinc Scale: "The Ningde era does have strong strength, but there is no superhuman breakthrough in technology, and the current problems are two: one is that the valuation is overdrawn a lot of growth; the other is that if others have new technologies, the impact is huge." ”
After all, breaking through the core technology of power batteries is more critical.