On the evening of November 19th, Xiaopeng Motors (09868) released its strongest quarterly report in company history.
In the third quarter of 2024, Xiaopeng Motors delivered a total of 46533 vehicles, which exceeded expectations and increased by 16.3% compared to the same period in 2023 with 40008 vehicles delivered; The total revenue was RMB 10.1 billion, an increase of 24.5% compared to the second quarter of 2024; The gross profit margin reached a historic high of 15.3%, an increase of 18 percentage points year-on-year.
However, on the day of the financial report release, Xiaopeng Motors' US stock fell 3.77%, while during the same period, Ideal Auto (02015) rose slightly by 0.91% and NIO (09866) fell slightly by 0.86%.
Obviously, facing the strongest quarterly report in Xiaopeng's history, investors have not rushed forward and there are still some doubts.
In this "strongest" quarterly report claimed by Xiaopeng Motors, a gross profit margin of 15.3% is indeed a historical high, while other data is not. For example, in the fourth quarter of 2023, the revenue was 13.05 billion yuan, and the total delivery of automobiles was 60158 units.
As for the historic high gross profit margin of 15.3%, it mainly relies on the rise of non automotive businesses. In the third quarter, Xiaopeng Motors' service and other revenue was RMB 1.31 billion, an increase of 90.7% compared to the same period in 2023, with a service and other business profit margin of 60.1%. The profit margin of automobiles is 8.6%. The service and other income mainly refers to the technology research and development service income related to the platform and software strategy and electronic and electrical architecture technology strategic cooperation with Volkswagen Group.
In addition, the decline in the average price of Xiaopeng Motors' bicycles has also worried investors. Xiaopeng Motors' average bicycle price in the first quarter of 2024 was 254000 yuan, the average bicycle price in the second quarter was 226000 yuan, and it dropped to 189000 yuan in the third quarter, with a stable decline of over 20000 yuan per quarter.
It is relatively commendable that although the average price of bicycles has declined, the gross profit margin of Xiaopeng Motors' business has steadily increased: the gross profit margin in the first quarter was 5.5%, in the second quarter it was 6.4%, and in the third quarter it reached 8.6%.
But this is only compared to oneself. If we make a horizontal comparison, Xiaopeng Motors' strongest quarterly report in history also loses a lot of color.
In the third quarter of "Weixiaoli", Ideal Automobile delivered a total of 152800 new cars, a year-on-year increase of 45.4%, with revenue reaching 42.874 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.6%, and a vehicle gross profit margin of 20.9%; NIO's third quarter financial report has not been released. In the second quarter, its revenue was 17.446 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 99%. The delivery volume was 57400 units, a year-on-year increase of 143.9%, and the gross profit margin of the entire vehicle was 12.2%.
Xiaomi Group (01810), which only released new cars in March this year, is even more impressive. In the third quarter, the Xiaomi SU7 series delivered 39790 new cars, generating revenue of 9.5 billion yuan and a gross profit margin of 17.1%.
For the remaining four quarters of 2024, Xiaopeng Motors expects the total delivery of automobiles to be between 87000 and 91000 units, an increase of approximately 44.6% to 51.3% year-on-year; The total revenue will range from RMB 15.3 billion to RMB 16.2 billion, with an annual increase of 17.2% to 24.1%.
For Xiaopeng Motors themselves, this is definitely an explosive fourth quarter expectation, but if they want to laugh at the end in the fierce competition for new energy vehicles in the domestic market, Xiaopeng Motors' speed is not fast enough.
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the cumulative retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China reached 3.026 million units in the third quarter, a year-on-year increase of 43.9% and a month on month increase of 29.37%. Even giant companies like BYD (002594) sold 2.354 million units from January to September, a year-on-year increase of up to 40%.
With the popularity of Mona M03 and P7+, Xiaopeng has received a large number of orders. Charles Zhang, Vice President of Finance at Xiaopeng Motors, stated at the Q3 performance meeting that Xiaopeng has a significant backlog of orders for the MONA M03 and P7+models, which have been scheduled until the first quarter of next year.
As the car company considered the most Tesla like in China, Xiaopeng Motors is now facing a situation similar to Tesla's in the past: holding large orders but severely lacking production capacity.
The Shanghai Gigafactory is Tesla's solution. In 2019, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory began construction in January and completed the first delivery of Model 3 on December 30 of the same year. Before the completion of the Shanghai Gigafactory, Tesla delivered 97000 vehicles in the third quarter of 2019, which was also the last quarter before the factory was built.
After the completion of the Shanghai Gigafactory, Tesla's production capacity began to soar. In 2020, Tesla's global annual production was 509000 vehicles, of which the Shanghai Gigafactory had an annual production of 144000 vehicles; In 2021, the production capacity of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory doubled, with an annual delivery volume of 484100 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 235%, accounting for 51% of Tesla's annual delivery volume; In 2022, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory delivered over 710000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 48%, accounting for 54.2% of Tesla's global delivery volume; The cumulative delivery volume of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory in 2023 reached 947000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 33%, accounting for more than half of its global production capacity.
When asked about production capacity at the performance meeting, Charles Zhang stated that the company has already implemented a "dual shift mode" in its factories in Guangzhou and Zhaoqing. Under the "double shift" system, the annual production capacity of each factory is approximately 200000 to 300000 units.
On the other hand, the situation faced by Xiaopeng Motors is very different from Tesla's back then: Tesla had almost no substitutes, and no matter how long users waited, they had no other choice but to wait for Tesla's production capacity to increase. Nowadays, Xiaopeng Motors faces too many and too strong competitors in China. The lifecycle of a model is often short, and the speed of competitors is very fast.
However, Xiaopeng Motors seems overly optimistic about this. Charles Zhang said at the performance meeting, "I believe that the new products launched by Xiaopeng Motors, including Xiaopeng MONA M03 and Xiaopeng P7+, are very competitive in terms of product functionality. The reason why users choose our product is because they have no substitutes. Or in this price range, there are very few or very limited alternative products that users can choose from
An example that can be referenced is that two months after the M03 was launched, another Guangzhou car company, Aion, also launched a similar model AION RT. The publicly available data shows that the pre-sale lasted for 24 hours and the order volume exceeded 16000 units; Pre sold for one month, with an order volume exceeding 30000 units.
Although the data did not explode with M03, it is sufficient to pose a threat.
The strong point of Xiaopeng Motors is its intelligent driving ability, but other shortcomings, including production capacity, have limited its growth in recent years, resulting in a gap in scale compared to the other two companies in "Weixiaoli". In the entire domestic new energy market, the scale of Xiaopeng Motors is far from enough.
At the "Ten Year Love Night" press conference of Xiaopeng Motors, He Xiaopeng put forward a viewpoint that in the next ten years, there will only be seven mainstream brands in the domestic automobile market. If the annual sales volume does not reach 1 million units, one cannot become the ultimate winner.
To become the next Tesla and one of the last seven remaining companies, Xiaopeng Motors is still 900000 units away from the annual delivery of 1 million vehicles claimed by its "senior brother" as of the third quarter of 2024.