The paper wins first, and the money that wins later. This phrase is often mentioned in gambling.
Once, WEILAI has created a series of impressive achievements: the earliest to achieve 50,000 mass production vehicles; the earliest cumulative delivery of 100,000 vehicles; the first to launch a power exchange model; the first Chinese automaker to list on the US stock market...
It is with these "supreme glory" performances, even in the most difficult 2019, WEILAI still loses the favor of capital. In this way, there is no danger, and Weilai has walked through 2020 almost perfectly.
From the second half of 2021, the restless market began to hold high the banner of advancing into the second half of the car,Around revealed its defeat at an inopportune time.
Sales faded out of the first camp, the growth rate ranked at the tail end, product accidents were frequent, revenue turned positive far away, and the brand "moat" built by fans had obvious cracks...
However, none of this is a big deal compared to the larger crisis. Weilai's 2022 is like "crossing the robbery", and it is another realm after it has passed.
Drop in the middle of the road or take off twice
On March 10, WEILAI landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the form of "introducing the listing". Regarding the introduction of listing, the advantage is that the review mechanism is relatively relaxed and the approval period is relatively short; the disadvantage is that it is not allowed to raise funds by means of additional issuance and bond issuance within half a year.
No company does not want to raise funds when it is launched in the second issue, which is the consensus of the capital community. Compared with the 2021 Listing of Xiaopeng and Ideal Hong Kong Stocks to raise 14 billion and HK$11.8 billion respectively, WEILAI's operation is a bit of a compromise.
Wei Lai's hurried and panicked look, is it very bad money? Weilai holds 60 billion yuan in hand, which is the new force with the highest cash reserves. Even at the rate of annual loss of 10 billion, WEILAI can operate normally within 6 years.
Therefore, the focus of the problem has to fall on the 2020 VAM agreement with the Hefei government.
At that time, the Hefei government's requirements for NIO included:
Revenue in 2020 is 14.8 billion yuan (3 models listed); revenue in 2024 is 120 billion yuan (6-8 models listed); total revenue is 420 billion yuan and total tax revenue is 7.8 billion yuan from 2020 to 2025; and it will be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board by 2025.
If the above conditions are not met, NIO will need to repurchase 7 billion Yuanhe government investment at an annual interest rate of 8.5% and bear the risk of default. This is the tight curse on Wei Lai's head.
The successful listing of NIO's Hong Kong stocks has at least two positive implications for the implementation of this agreement:
First, as of now, including Geely, Weima and so on have folded the science and technology innovation board, in the absence of a precedent for the listing of car companies, Weilai first transitioned from the US stock market to the Hong Kong stock market, and then from the Hong Kong stock market to the science and technology innovation board, the possibility will be greater.
Second, after 6 months, WEILAI will get Hong Kong stock financing opportunities, and Weilai will fight the bottom line goal of "revenue of 120 billion yuan" with more abundant capital, and at present, Weilai's annual revenue is only 30 billion yuan.
However, there is no capital bureau where bets are not lost. If NIO Hong Kong stocks perform poorly, it will further reduce the expectations of the capital market and make NIO closer to the desired target.
Weilai Hong Kong stock listing, is a sign of the fall of the family road, or the origin of the second take-off, it depends on how Weilai does.
Incremental market or adjust tonality
The capital market has always looked at expectations and future growth. It is unavoidable that the judgment of expectations is always inseparable from the status quo as the most basic reference.
The current situation of Weilai is very magical.
Are sales bad?
Weilai does have the risk of drifting away from the ideal and Xiaopeng. But to leave the price to talk about sales is to play hooligans. At least from the data of 2021, the top three sales of high-end pure electric SUVs in China are All Nio models, ES6, EC6, ES8, and the total market share has exceeded 65%.
Such a gratifying result should earn money, right?
No, every time WEIlai sells a new car, it loses an average of 30,000 yuan, and the more it sells, the more it loses. Completely into an endless loop.
The phenomenon of new forces building car losses, Wei Xiaoli has continued so far, how did it become a dead cycle when Wei came here?
All the problems boil down to the problems with NIO's profit model.
Service is a commercial barrier of NIO, consisting of battery swap service and APP community service as two main components. To this end, Weilai has made a lot of investment, even more than research and development, which is difficult for a start-up to imagine.
Therefore, Li Bin can also easily explain: Weilai Automobile is expensive because in addition to products, there are high value-added services. Fundamentally speaking, Li Bin is still emphasizing the cost performance of Weilai products. This just exposes the deviation of Weilai's understanding of high-end automotive products: in the true sense, high-end never talks about cost performance. Don't say Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Tesla do not talk about cost performance, Tesla is constantly updating and iterating FSD, constantly bringing new experiences and expectations to users. The high-end of automotive products must return to a unique product style.
Weilai obviously does not have any particular persuasion in its products. We also couldn't find a clear functional feature to show NIO's product style.
Therefore, no matter how much Weilai's service makes a lot of noise, it is more than Weilai's rich self-made cars, and none of them follow the path that Weilai has traveled. Even if the entry is replaced, the entry point of Geely, BYD and so on is very different from the style of Weilai.
Nio's commercial barriers are illusory, and it is also a big pit that is extremely difficult to fill, like an unreal gold-devouring beast. Such commercial barriers cannot support Weilai's profit model. Now Weilai is really difficult: the service continues, the loss continues; the service is reduced, the scolding is everywhere; the product is up, the sales volume is low; the product is down, and the loss is aggravated.
It's not an endless cycle, what else can it be?
What is in front of Weilai is almost a sending proposition: insisting on market increment can make a little gimmick in the capital market, but it is not a long-term solution; insisting on changing the brand tone, reducing the service points, and adding points to the product, not only negating its original intention, but also exacerbating the unpredictability of the future market.
The future of NIO is really hard.
Write at the end
We do a lot of things that others think are particularly silly and can't understand why we do it. But in fact, the logic behind why I do this is very clear, I am used to standing in the longer time dimension of 10 years, or even 15 years to think about the problem.
This is Li Bin's exposition on the theory of long-term doctrine of car building.
Born in 1974, Li Bin graduated from the Department of Sociology of Peking University and has been the bell ringer for 4 IPOs, and it is not too much to say that Li Bin is the talent of this era.
Maybe Li Bin is right, shallow is our group of outsiders.