Poster News reporter Zhou Lingfeng reports
In the first half of this year, the attention to topics related to new forces in car manufacturing has been fluctuating, with the Beijing Auto Show, Chengdu Auto Show, and Shanghai Auto Show frequently appearing on hot searches. The reporter observed that behind this "explosion" is not only the competition of capital, but also the fluctuation of the market. With the completion of the disclosure of the semi annual reports of major new car making forces, they have released their "report cards", and capital has also begun to re-examine various new car making forces in the second half of the year.
Among them, the most interesting one is undoubtedly 'Wei Xiaoli'. For a long time, Ideal Automobile was the first among "NIO Xiaoli" to release financial reports, followed by Xiaopeng Motors, and finally NIO. This year, there has been a sudden shift in the order of releases. Xiaopeng Motors released its semi annual report on August 20th, Ideal Motors released its semi annual report on August 28th, the day after the M03 was launched, and NIO released its report on September 5th, the fifth day after the opening of its Ledao offline store.
NIO Q2 Delivery Data
Ledao's debut
Continue to adhere to technological innovation
Data shows that NIO achieved sales of 87000 vehicles in the first half of 2024, with an average monthly sales of nearly 15000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 60.2%. The total revenue also increased accordingly, reaching 27.355 billion yuan in the first half of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 40.65%.
Main financial indicators of NIO in Q2 2024
If we only look at sales and revenue, NIO does indeed have a promising future. But there is an undeniable fact that NIO, which has seen significant growth in both revenue and sales, has yet to achieve profitability. In the second quarter of this year, NIO's net loss was 5.05 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.7% and a month on month increase of 2.7%. Throughout the first half of the year, NIO's net loss attributable to its parent company reached 10.38 billion yuan. From the current reaction of the capital market, NIO's losses seem to be expected, but the capital market is somewhat pleased with this loss report. This is mainly due to its "narrowing" loss rate. Compared to the same period last year, NIO incurred a net loss of 10.384 billion yuan in the first half of this year. Although the year-on-year loss has expanded, focusing on the second quarter, NIO's net loss was 5.05 billion yuan, a decrease of 1 billion yuan from the same period last year and a decrease of about 150 million yuan compared to the previous quarter.
NIO Business Outlook
In addition, NIO has also provided its most optimistic quarterly delivery and revenue forecast to date, with an expected delivery of 61000 to 63000 vehicles in the third quarter and revenue expected to reach 19.11 billion to 19.67 billion yuan, both of which are expected to reach historical highs.
The capital market has directly given positive feedback: since the release of its financial report on September 5th, NIO's US stock has risen for three consecutive days, with a cumulative increase of over 31%. After the release of the financial report, Hong Kong stocks rose for two consecutive days, with a cumulative increase of over 24%.
Since 2023, NIO has initiated a series of adjustments. The reform of sales organizational structure and more aggressive sales policies resulted in NIO delivering a total of 128100 new cars from January to August 2024, a year-on-year increase of 35.77%. Starting from May this year, NIO's delivery volume began to exceed 20000 vehicles, and then stabilized at the level of 20000 vehicles in June, July, and August. But NIO has only achieved 56% of the 230000 sales target set at the beginning of the year. In the remaining four months, with the debut of the sub brand Ledao, the sales burden is likely to fall on it.
Comments from CEO and CFO
In addition, NIO is also continuously increasing its efforts in technology research and development and battery swapping. At the "2024 NIO Innovation and Technology Day" held on July 27th, Li Bin announced in a high-profile manner that the world's first automotive grade 5-nanometer high-performance intelligent driving chip, the NIO "Shenji NX9031", developed by NIO, has been successfully taped out. The performance of a single chip can rival that of four Nvidia Orin X. As of now, NIO has built over 2500 supercharging stations worldwide, with an estimated cost of 3 million yuan per swapping station. NIO's investment in this business has exceeded 7 billion yuan, and if the later operation and maintenance costs are added, this number will further expand.
MONA M03 (Source: Xiaopeng Motors official website)
Sales are getting farther and farther away from the top tier
MONA, also known as the "turning point" of the brand
On August 27th, the MONA M03 under Xiaopeng Motors was officially launched for sale, which seems to have brought Xiaopeng back to the peak of the P7 era. 52 minutes after the new car was launched, the number of vehicles sold exceeded 10000. Within 48 hours, the order quantity reached 30000 vehicles. According to the official app of Xiaopeng Motors, both versions of the MONA M03 on sale need to be scheduled for production, with the 515 long-range version waiting for 2 to 4 weeks and the 620 ultra long range version waiting for 5 to 7 weeks.
Delivery volume of Xiaopeng Motors in the second quarter
Even though this model has become popular on the market, it still cannot make up for the fact that Xiaopeng Motors is getting farther and farther away from the first tier of new car making forces. In the first eight months of this year, Xiaopeng Motors' cumulative sales were 77000 units, a year-on-year increase of 17%, only reaching 27.6% of the annual sales target of 280000 units. In contrast, Ideal Auto, NIO, and Leapmotor achieved sales of 288000, 128000, and 139000 vehicles respectively during the same period.
Main financial data of Xiaopeng Motors
Although Xiaopeng Motors has initiated a series of changes, it is still under great pressure at present. According to the semi annual report, Xiaopeng Motors achieved a revenue of 14.66 billion yuan in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 61.2%; The net loss was 2.65 billion yuan, which has narrowed compared to last year. Among them, Xiaopeng Motors achieved a revenue of 8.11 billion yuan and a net loss of 1.28 billion yuan in the second quarter. In terms of gross profit margin, Xiaopeng Motors' gross profit margin in the first half of this year was 13.5%, reversing the trend of negative gross profit margin in the same period last year.
However, the reason for Xiaopeng Motors' losses is closely related to the sluggish sales of the brand. Xiaopeng Motors delivered 21821 vehicles in the first quarter of this year and 30207 vehicles in the second quarter. From the overall delivery of new energy vehicle companies in the first half of the year, Xiaopeng Motors' delivery volume is not outstanding, with an average monthly delivery of less than 9000 vehicles.
However, regarding this situation, Xiaopeng Motors expressed confidence at its performance meeting on the evening of August 20th that its delivery volume will continue to grow in the third and fourth quarters of this year, and reach a new high in the fourth quarter. The company expects to deliver 41000 to 45000 vehicles in the third quarter, an increase of 2.5% to 12.5% year-on-year.
Even though Xiaopeng Motors has confidence in sales, its current situation still urgently needs a "good medicine". In this regard, MONA, a sub brand of Xiaopeng Motors, is undertaking the mission of brand "transformation". However, the reporter found that there are not many hot selling models of MONA M03 in the pricing range (119800 yuan to 155800 yuan) released this time, and it is still unknown how much market share can be allocated to this model.
However, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, sales of new energy passenger vehicles in the price range of 150000 yuan to 200000 yuan increased significantly from January to July this year, with a cumulative sales volume of 1.554 million units, a year-on-year increase of 13.85%. Behind such growth data, MONA seems to have a chance to break through. It is worth mentioning that because MONA's pricing range is the home ground for BYD and traditional car companies, this may mean that Xiaopeng and BYD are about to engage in a direct confrontation.
Ideal MEGA (Source: Ideal Automotive Official Website)
Pure electric product failure but does not affect performance
R&D investment continues to increase
Although Ideal Automobile experienced a public opinion storm caused by the failure of its first pure electric model in the first half of the year, its sales still ranked among the top. In the first half of the year, the delivery volume of Ideal Automobile increased by 35.8% year-on-year, reaching 188900 units. As of the end of June, the cumulative delivery volume of Ideal Automobile has reached 822300 units, becoming the first Chinese new force automobile brand to achieve the milestone of cumulative delivery of 800000 units.
Delivery quantity situation
In the first quarter, Ideal Auto's sales fell 39% month on month to 80400 units due to the poor start of MEGA, but fortunately returned to the 100000 mark in the second quarter. This stems from Ideal Auto quickly finding a popular model after its failure. On April 18th, the Ideal L6 was officially released, with a suggested retail price range of 249800 yuan to 279800 yuan, lower than other models previously launched. The Ideal L6 is the first product of Ideal Automobile to enter the market below 300000 yuan, with a cumulative delivery volume exceeding 50000 units within three months of its launch. Starting from June, its monthly delivery volume has continuously exceeded 20000 vehicles.
According to data statistics, the Ideal L6 supported approximately 36% of sales in the second quarter, with a total of 39200 units sold. Supported by the Ideal L6, Ideal Auto delivered a total of 108600 new cars in the second quarter, a year-on-year increase of 25.48% and a growth of 35.05% compared to the first quarter.
Main financial data of Ideal Automobile for the first half of 2024
However, the considerable sales feedback on revenue is that it achieved a revenue of 57.3 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 20.81%; Net profit reached 1.695 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 47.4%. Although the net profit is close to halving, mainly due to MEGA's "Waterloo", the market should have some expectations for this.
The situation of sales expenses and research and development expenses.
In fact, upon closer examination of the financial report, we may find that the main reasons for the loss of operating profit and the decrease in gross profit margin may also be related to changes in the company's research and development expenses and marketing expenses. In the first half of the year, the R&D and marketing expenses of Ideal Automobile were 6.076 billion and 5.793 billion, respectively, while in the same period last year, these two expenses were 4.278 billion and 3.955 billion, respectively. In the first half of this year, these two expenses increased by 42% and 46.47%, respectively. The reporter found that the R&D expenses increased by about 1.8 billion yuan this time. If this increase is deducted, the company's net profit may reach about 3.5 billion yuan.
However, increasing research and development investment is currently a major trend in the new energy market. Company President Ma Donghui stated at the performance meeting that Ideal's input-output efficiency in self driving has always been relatively high. From the market perspective, intelligent driving has had a good driving effect on the company's sales, and the proportion of potential users who come to Ideal's store to test drive NOAs has doubled. In addition, the proportion of AD Max orders for various models is increasing, especially for models priced over 300000 yuan, the proportion of AD Max orders has approached 70%.
Perhaps influenced by MEGA, as early as the first quarter performance meeting, Li Xiang had informed the company that there would be no new product launches in the second half of the year, and pure electric products would be postponed until 2025. This means that the Ideal L6 is the last new car launched by the company this year.
Looking ahead to the third quarter, the quarterly delivery volume of Ideal Automobile is expected to reach 145000 to 155000 units, a year-on-year increase of 38.0% -47.5%; The total revenue is expected to reach 39.4 billion yuan to 42.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.7% to 21.6%.