Column Attitude
Author Pu Zixu
Editor Ding Guangsheng
"I don't want casualty data, just Tashan ！”
In the decisive battle, the Tashan Campaign was bloody and cruel, but it was crucial. Both the offensive and defensive sides almost ran out of ammunition, and there was no room for manoeuvre.
On May 21, Xiaopeng Automobile The financial report for the first quarter of 2024 was released, with the revenue of 6.55 billion yuan, exceeding the expected 6.1 billion yuan, and the gross profit margin significantly improved to 12%. Once the financial report is released, The US stock market of Xiaopeng Automobile once rose more than 10%.
This shows the positive results of this company's drastic reform in the past year.
However, if Xiaopeng Automobile wants to turn its advantages into victory and break out of the tight encirclement in the new energy vehicle market, it must fight an arduous and even costly Tashan battle.
1、 Xiaopeng Auto, reassess
The first quarter financial report of Xiaopeng Automobile in 2024 gives Volkswagen a new perspective to reassess this car company, which is often volatile and has mixed feelings.
On the whole, Xiaopeng's revenue in Q1 2024 will be 6.55 billion yuan, down 49.8% month on month, up 62.3% year on year, exceeding the market expectation of 6.11 billion yuan. Among them, the sales revenue of Xiaopeng Automobile in the first quarter was 5.54 billion yuan, up 57.8% year on year.
In terms of sales, Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 21821 vehicles in the first quarter, up 19.7% year on year. Among them, X9 has delivered nearly 10000 units accumulatively in four months, becoming a new growth point of Xiaopeng Automobile. In April, Xiaopeng delivered 9393 cars. As of April 30, Xiaopeng had delivered 31214 vehicles in total.
In terms of key gross profit rate, Xiaopeng's gross profit rate in the first quarter was 12.9%, compared with 1.7% in the same period of 2023 and 6.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023.
If you look around the year 2023, Xiaopeng's gross profit rate is zero or even negative. At that time, this enterprise suffered "blood loss" from car making disputes.
However, with the restoration of gross profit in the first quarter of 2024, the cost control that Xiaopeng once lacked has entered a positive cycle. In terms of cost, with the decrease of commissions paid to franchise stores and the decrease of marketing, promotion and advertising expenses, Xiaopeng's sales, general and administrative expenses in the first quarter reached 1.39 billion yuan, only 0.1% higher than 1.39 billion yuan in the same period of 2023, and 28.3% lower than 1.94 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The combination of factors such as revenue exceeding expectations, gross profit repair, and cost control, It also directly triggered the positive feedback that the capital market once gave a rise of more than 10% after the release of Xiaopeng's financial report.
In addition, on the profit side, Xiaopeng's net loss in the first quarter was 1.37 billion yuan, which was lower than 2.34 billion yuan in the same period of 2023 and 1.35 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023.
"Under the extremely fierce market competition, the gross profit margin of the company rose significantly to 12.9% in the first quarter." In this regard, Gu Hongdi, honorary vice chairman and co president of Xiaopeng Auto, said: "This marks that Xiaopeng Automobile has realized a unique mode of improving profitability and international potential through intelligent technology output on the basis of intelligent electric vehicle business."
In fact, in the first quarter, in addition to auto sales revenue, Xiaopeng also improved its profitability through intelligent technology output, as well as its international model, which brought the company 1 billion yuan in service and other revenue, an increase of 480 million yuan year-on-year and 180 million yuan month on month. Xiaopeng said that From Q1 and Volkswagen Group Technical R&D service income related to software strategic technical cooperation of the platform.
On April 17 this year, Xiaopeng Automobile and Volkswagen Group officially signed the EEA Electronic and Electrical Architecture Technology Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement. Previously, the two companies had signed a joint development agreement on platform and software strategic technology cooperation, and signed a joint procurement plan.
In this regard, Chairman of Xiaopeng Automobile He Xiaopeng It said: "Through the cooperation with VOLKSWAGEN With the strategic cooperation of the Group, Xiaopeng Automobile took the lead in realizing the output empowerment of self-developed intelligent technology, and our industry-leading technology will gain greater market influence and better financial returns. "
Compared with other car enterprises, Xiaopeng Technology Sailing offers another way to increase revenue. In fact, since this year, Xiaopeng Automobile has carried out technical cooperation with enterprises in Hong Kong, Macao, Europe and Southeast Asia.
It is worth noting that as of March 31, 2024, cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investments and term deposits amounted to 41.4 billion.
2、 What is Xiaopeng's Tashan Campaign?
the near future, He Xiaopeng once Microblogging, say Making a car is a long-distance race One foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake is a big taboo. Pursuing the compound interest growth of polygonal soldiers is a big opportunity.
"Different from Internet entrepreneurship, my experience in the automotive industry is that when it's good, don't think you are smart and arrogant. When it's bad, in fact, most of the problems are not competition and others. The core is self-examination and PDCA."
In order to prepare for the long-distance race, Xiaopeng Automobile started multiple preparations.
For example, as of March 31, 2024, Xiaopeng Auto's physical sales network covers 178 cities and has 574 stores. At the same time, its self operated charging station network has reached 1171 charging stations.
In addition, on May 20, before the release of the financial report, Xiao Peng released the "AI Tianji" intelligent system, which applies the AI big model to the cockpit, intelligent driving and other fields in a larger range. On this occasion, Xiaopeng Automobile said that the intelligent driving system can increase its capacity by 30 times in 18 months, and it is optimistic that people will experience L4 like intelligent driving in 2025.
"Xiaopeng has taken the lead in realizing the mass production application of AI big model in China's automobile industry, and we are confident that we can more efficiently launch competitive models around the world and lead the popularization of AI smart cars in a large scale." He Xiaopeng said.
In addition, Xiaopeng Automobile also plans to expand its intelligent driving team, adding 4000 people. At the same time, the investment in intelligent research and development will also reach 3.5 billion yuan, and the annual investment in computing power training will exceed 700 million yuan.
Although He Xiaopeng said on the financial report conference call that the company now has 41.4 billion yuan in cash and can pay more attention to the long-term strategic choice of winning, so it will not focus only on sales growth as before.
However, it is important to plan a long distance race patiently, but it is realistic. Especially in the increasingly fierce new energy vehicle market, the success or failure has been built by the fierce 100 meter sprint. The horizontal line collision is undoubtedly the sales volume of car enterprises.
In the past few years, it has almost become the consensus of the industry that whoever has the highest sales volume and the loudest voice in the car market will have a harder fist and mouth.
And automobile is undoubtedly the industry with the most prominent scale effect. Once the sales volume of automobile enterprises rises, the costs of technology, R&D, industrial chain, etc. will be gradually shared, the marginal costs will rapidly decline, and the profits will increase exponentially; In the upstream supply chain system, auto enterprises have more say. The production capacity can be fully guaranteed, and consumers will trust their market holdings, and will also love to buy, thus forming a virtuous circle.
An intuitive example is that after the first assembly line production method was created in the last century, Ford's annual output of cars quickly broke through from 10000 to 100000+vehicles. Other cars often sell for two or three thousand dollars. Ford only sells for 850 dollars, but it can still have high profits. In 1927, Ford launched the Model T at a price as low as $290. Ford's market share in the United States was close to 50%.
In addition, Tesla's share price rose by 743% in 2020, which was actually due to its sales volume of more than 500000, and finally turned losses into profits. With the increase of production capacity, the prominent scale effect, and the global expectation of valuation for the transformation of the automotive industry, Tesla's market value is rising, and gradually becomes the global lightning king.
From this point of view, the current sales volume of Xiaopeng Automobile is not enough to make it enter the finals smoothly.
In fact, although Xiaopeng has many models at present, it lacks popular models. The overall monthly sales volume is less than 10000, which is obviously inferior to its peak. In the first four months of 2024, its cumulative sales volume is 31200 vehicles, and the ranking of new forces has dropped to the eighth.
Previously, He Xiaopeng said in the 2023 financial report that "Xiaopeng Automobile is about to launch a large product cycle of more than 10 new models in the next three years. We will firmly lead the technology equality of advanced automatic driving, cover the most mainstream mass market customers, and go to the global market, constantly expand our scale effect, technical advantages, and accelerate the commercialization of technology."
In order to win the favor of the mass market, the forefront of Xiaopeng Auto's key campaign has undoubtedly become MONA: a compact pure electric car, defined as a price band of 100000 to 150000 yuan. This model will be the key for Xiaopeng to boost sales.
According to Xiaopeng's financial report, this car will be unveiled in June this year and officially launched and delivered in the third quarter. In addition, He Xiaopeng said that Xiaopeng Auto was the first car company in China to bring advanced intelligent driving capability to the Class A car market of 100000 to 150000 yuan.
"Life Of Of course the road very long ， but The decisive opportunity is often only once or twice. "
At this moment, Xiaopeng Automobile is committed to improving its internal skills, has sufficient cash flow, and has a large number of new models to be launched. It seems that everything is ready. But the problem is that, whether willing or not, business competition is never a dinner party, and it is based on the present for a long time.
As a result, Tashan is in front of us. A battle of sales regardless of cost, cost and casualties may be the key battle to determine the success or failure of Xiaopeng Auto in 2024.
