China Economic Weekly - Economic Network News - Jianghuai Automobile's Transfer of NIO Factory - Boots Landing! NIO Motors, which has just been exposed to have obtained car manufacturing qualifications, has officially taken over the relevant production line, further away from independent car manufacturing.
On the evening of December 5th, Jianghuai Automobile announced that the three asset packages related to the three publicly listed passenger car factories and the new bridge factory of the passenger car company had completed bidding. According to the bidding results, NIO Automobile became the transferee of the first and third asset packages, with transaction prices of 1.666 billion yuan and 1.492 billion yuan respectively, totaling 3.158 billion yuan; The second package of assets was won by Hefei Hengchuang Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hefei Hengchuang"), a subsidiary of the State owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Hefei Economic Development Zone, for 1.418 billion yuan.
On the same day, NIO also announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that the company had signed a definitive agreement with Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co., Ltd. to acquire certain production equipment and assets. According to these deterministic agreements, NIO will acquire the production equipment and assets of the first and second advanced manufacturing bases from Jianghuai, with a total price of approximately RMB 3.16 billion excluding taxes.
It is worth mentioning that the three factories of passenger car company and the new bridge factory of passenger car company sold by Jianghuai Automobile are known as NIO F1 and NIO F2 factories within the company. Previously, they were used for contract manufacturing for NIO, and the production line was customized by NIO.
At the same time as winning the Jianghuai assets, NIO announced its third quarter financial report on the evening of the same day. As of the end of the third quarter, NIO's cash reserves reached 45.2 billion yuan, an increase of 13.7 billion yuan from the previous quarter, which is sufficient to pay for the acquisition of the aforementioned assets.
In terms of business data, NIO's revenue and delivery volume in the third quarter both reached historic highs, with revenue reaching 19.07 billion yuan, a month on month increase of 117.4% and a year-on-year increase of 46.6%; The delivery volume was 55400 units, a month on month increase of 135.7% and a year-on-year increase of 75.4%; The gross profit margin of the entire vehicle has returned to double digits and reached 11%, while the net loss has narrowed, increasing by 10.8% compared to the same period last year.
At the Q3 financial report conference call, NIO Chairman Li Bin answered the motivation for acquiring assets from the Jianghuai factory to obtain independent production qualifications. He said, "From a manufacturing perspective, if we completely manufacture independently, manufacturing costs will decrease by 10%.".
Regarding this news, some netizens said, "I want to know if the cost of the car will decrease in price." "See you for the selling price. The cost here has decreased, and the retail end is likely to increase instead of decrease." "So NIO is going to lower the price, right?"
Data shows that from January to November 2023, NIO delivered a total of 142000 new cars, a year-on-year increase of 33.1%; As of the end of November 2023, a total of 431600 new cars have been delivered. Behind the sustained growth in sales, Jianghuai Automobile, as a contract factory, also gained a share of the pie. According to NIO's financial report, from 2018 to 2022, approximately 223 million yuan, 441 million yuan, 532 million yuan, 715 million yuan, and 1.127 billion yuan were paid to Jianghuai Automobile for outsourcing costs.