Factory acquired by the Great Wall? Assets divided?
Text | Peng Suping
Recently, *ST Zotye, which has fallen into an operational crisis, has returned to the public's vision.
According to media reports, Great Wall Motors has acquired Zotye's Linyi plant. In addition, there is news that many assets of the "Zotye system" have been divided one after another, the Great Wall has been associated with Zotye before, and another powerful car company- BYD has also pocketed Zotye-related factories.
The news that Great Wall and other car companies have acquired factories around Zotye has not been confirmed by the parties, but for Zotye, no matter who the existing production base is sold to and how much it has sold, its own business restart is the most critical.
Last year, *ST Zotye and its 8 subsidiaries completed the restructuring plan, according to the next step of the plan, the company will be restructured with the assistance of restructuring investors, the company will resume the vehicle manufacturing industry.
On the occasion of the arrival of the New Year, the official platform of Zotye, which has not appeared for a long time, sent a poster of "Congratulations on the Happy New Year for Chinese People around the World", with the upcoming Zotye TS5, which was switched from "China V" to "China VI" emission standards, a project that has been repeatedly shelved to "see the light of day" and is also interpreted by the outside world as a signal for the restart of Zotye's business.
On the afternoon of February 10, asked whether there would be a new car on the market in the short term, Zotye relevant people told the think tank Jun that the business restart "should not be so fast", and the company's top priority is the change of management.
According to public information, *ST Zotye will hold the first extraordinary shareholders' meeting of this year on February 17 to consider the proposals for the election of non-independent directors, and the new non-independent directors who have previously passed the board of directors include Huang Jihong, Lian Gang, Ye Changqing, etc. After the completion of the procedure, Huang Jihong will "logically" serve as the chairman of *ST Zotye - the current chairman of ST Zotye is Hu Shuizhuo, or the business executive of the company under the Iron Bull Group, the original controlling shareholder of *ST Zotye.
Huang Jihong, the actual controller of Jiangsu Shenzhen Commercial Holding Group Co., Ltd. ("Jiangsu Shenzhen Commercial"), the restructuring investor of *ST Zhongtai, led the restructuring of the huge group, and Lian Gang was appointed president of the company in March last year, a "veteran" of the automotive industry, and a former vice president of Changan Automobile.
Under the leadership of the new company management, can *ST Zotye get out of the haze as soon as possible? This may become a key factor in the performance of the *ST Zotye market this year. In the past year, based on restructuring expectations, *ST Zotye's stock price has risen by 370%, ranking first in the list of auto stock price increases in 2021 - *Whether ST Zotye's real business can support the current stock price and valuation, the test is about to begin.
*ST Zotye assets are divided?
In recent days, a new news that has been widely circulated in the industry is that Great Wall Motors has acquired Zotye's Linyi production base. According to media reports, the vicinity of Zotye's Linyi plant has become the Linyi branch of Great Wall Motors, and the acquisition "seems to have become an open secret in the local area."
Think tank Jun also found on a workplace social platform that a local person suspected of being in Linyi said: "The Great Wall's acquisition of Zotye (factory) is already a nail in the coffin, technical personnel have been stationed in more than 100 people, and the map is the Great Wall." ”
Think tank Jun also found on the map that Linyi Zotye Automobile and Great Wall Motor Linyi Branch are very close, and the west gate of the former is less than 1 km away from the latter and can be reached on foot.
However, both Zotye and Great Wall denied the idea of "acquisition". The above-mentioned Zotye relevant person told reporters that he had not heard of the sale of the factory to the Great Wall, at least the listed company had not recently sold the factory; the Great Wall also responded to the media: the company signed a contract with Linyi in November last year for the vehicle and parts production base project, but the signing party of the project was Great Wall Motor and the Linyi Municipal Government, "not involving other third parties." ”
Great Wall Motors is gaining momentum and has been actively expanding in recent years. According to some data, Great Wall Motors has previously been associated with Zotye Automobile. "Gaz Automobile" reported that in 2021, Great Wall Motors laid out production bases in Shangrao, Jiangxi and Daye, Hubei, and these two bases were the original Hanteng Automobile Phase II factory and Hanlong Automobile Factory.
But Hanteng and Hanlong are not Zotye brands, but other projects incubated by Zotye's former parent company, Iron Bull Group, and its executives. These brands are taking a similar route to Zotye, and they have also ended up depressed than Zotye, and the data shows that Hanteng only sold more than 700 vehicles a year last year, and Hanlong's only listed model has been discontinued.
In addition, the think tank Jun also saw on the above social platform that in November last year, job seekers in the automotive industry said that Chongqing Great Wall has now acquired all of Zotye's Chongqing factory, and does not rule out the possibility of building a research and development center in Chongqing. This means that the production capacity of Zotye's factories has been disposed of earlier.
For a car company in the reorganization stage, these disposals are necessary. However, Zotye is not likely to give up all its production bases, after all, after dealing with the debt crisis, Zotye aims to resume vehicle manufacturing. In the conditions for the reorganization investor to take over the project, it is also clearly stated: "As far as possible to maximize the preservation of Zotye Automobile's various bases nationwide.".
What are the odds of restarting the business?
The latest announcement said that the company has completed the reorganization in 2021, the reorganization plan has been implemented, and it is expected to generate restructuring revenue of 2-2.4 billion yuan. However, due to the company's subordinate automobile production bases are basically in a state of suspension, the company's main product automobile production and sales are not large, and the total sales revenue is low, so the company's operating performance in 2021 is still a loss.
Not surprisingly, *ST Zotye will fully restart its automotive business this year. In particular, the joining of Huang Jihong, the restructurer of the huge group, has allowed the outside world to see the hope of the car company that is deeply in crisis to start again.
Since 2020, *ST Zotye has fallen into a shutdown, and due to heavy losses and many debts, the company has entered the pre-restructuring stage. Since July 2021, the company's manager has officially launched the recruitment of restructuring investors, and at the end of September, Jiangsu Shenzhen Shang, controlled by Huang Jihong, has been established as the restructuring investor of *ST Zotye, and since then* ST Zotye and its 8 subsidiaries have completed the restructuring plan.
After the completion of the reorganization, Jiangsu Shenzhen Commercial and its co-actors held a total of 24.22% of the equity of *ST Zotye, succeeding Iron Bull Group to become the largest shareholder and controlling shareholder of *ST Zotye.
From Huang Jihong's point of view, the owner *ST Zotye made up his investment puzzle in the automotive field. Previously, this "big man" who started in Guangzhou and Shenzhen had become the controlling shareholder and actual controller of the huge group by participating in the bankruptcy reorganization of the huge group. According to media reports, Jiangsu Shenzhen Business has made it clear that the purpose of participating in the restructuring of Zotye is to obtain automobile production qualifications.
The most valuable brand in the hands of Zotye is only the automobile production qualification, the company's manager for the restructuring of investors specifically mentioned that to "maintain a certain period of suspension of production after the vehicle production qualification and related market access", at the same time, under the wave of electrification of the automotive industry, to "for Zotye Automobile to introduce the national "new energy vehicle industry development plan (2021-2035)" in the key encouragement of pure electric new energy vehicle production, industrial technical support, etc."
According to the restructuring plan previously released by *ST Zotye, in the traditional business, Zotye Automobile will gradually adjust its brand strategy for Zotye, Junma and other brands, and build a characteristic strategic system. The short-term plan is to reorganize its brands and concentrate resources to boost sales by merging homogeneous models, optimizing product sequences, optimizing cost structures and reorganizing dealer networks; the long-term plan is to build a brand matrix in the form of acquisitions and joint ventures to lay out the high-end new energy vehicle market.
*Although ST Zotye has initially stepped out of the "quagmire", it is still unknown whether it can really get back on the road. Some commentators said that Zotye lacks core technologies such as engines and gearboxes, and its efforts in new energy vehicles may increase the probability of success again. However, in the field of new energy vehicles, the market has not yet been formed on a large scale, and there are many participating players, gathering the first batch of new car-making forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal, new brands incubated by traditional car companies such as Extreme Krypton, Salon, and Zhiji, as well as many forces in the field of technology such as Huawei, Baidu, and Xiaomi .
The market clearly has misgivings about this. On the first trading day after the Spring Festival, *ST Zotye once closed the limit, but due to the unclear business prospects, its stock price then fluctuated downward, closing at 4.9 yuan on the day, up only slightly by 1.87%. On February 10, *ST Zotye's stock price did not rise or fall, closing at 4.7 yuan.