On June 1 day, Weimar Holdings Limited (hereinafter referred to as "Weimar") formally submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, intending to be listed on the main board. If all goes well, Weimar will become another new car company to land in Hong Kong stocks after Wei Xiaoli.
However, after reading this prospectus carefully, we can find that the data in it is not "beautiful": since the first model was launched in September 20 18, Weimar has only sold 83,000 vehicles in three years, with a cumulative loss of 65.438+07.435 billion yuan in three years.
If we count the negative news such as frequent spontaneous combustion of vehicles, power failure, science and technology innovation board IPO failure and so on in the last year, Weimar's IPO road of Hong Kong stocks seems to be uneven.
Three years ago, no one would have guessed that Weimar would be so miserable.
20 15, Weimar automobile was founded in Freeman Shen. In that era when the new forces were fighting, there were only a handful of car companies that finally survived. Freeman Shen learned a lesson from the failure of his predecessors, did not make luxury cars, focused on pure circuit lines, and insisted on building his own factory. Relying on the strategy of "pragmatism", Weimar survived this melee and became the first echelon.
On April 20 18, the first Weimar model EX5 was officially launched. With its excellent cost performance (the subsidized price range is 1 1.23 million -2 1.63 million yuan), this model has shocked the industry. At the delivery ceremony in September of that year, Freeman Shen also set a "small goal": to deliver 65,438+10,000 vehicles in 20 19. However, it took Weimar three years to achieve this small goal-even the "small plan" of delivering 65,438+00,000 vehicles in 2065,438+08 (3,844 vehicles were finally delivered that year).
But even so, Weimar EX5 is still the champion of the new power sales model in 20 19, and is still favored by the industry and the capital market.
Figure | Top 5 Sales of New Energy Vehicles in 2065438+2009
At that time, both Weilaihe were limited by the production capacity of the foundry, and Li was still in the second echelon. At the same time, all three auto companies have financing difficulties. On the other hand, Weimar not only built its own factory, but also obtained a lot of financing, so it is also the most nourishing new force car enterprise.
But it is a pity that Weimar did not seize the opportunity to stabilize the leading position of riding the dust, but went slower and slower, and was finally squeezed out of the top three by the ideal. Is the opponent too strong? Still too weak?
After the delivery of Weimar EX5, the quality problems of this new car emerged endlessly, including spontaneous combustion and fire, power failure of the new car, and even the owner thought that the cab was leaking.
If the quality problem is a common problem of new car companies, after all, the early models of Weilai, Ideality and Tesla all had quality problems that led to repair, but this model still had frequent quality problems in 20021year and did not improve at all. In just four days from February 20th to 23rd, 65438, EX5 had three spontaneous combustion accidents in Hainan and Henan, but fortunately no casualties were caused. However, in the face of tragedy, Weimar chose to "keep silent" about the IPO of science and technology innovation board.
It is not the first time that Weimar has kept silent because of quality problems. In the long run, this behavior reduces the integrity of enterprises and the purchasing confidence of consumers. Ironically, when Freeman Shen founded Weimar, he insisted on "building his own factory" and thought that only in this way can quality control and quality control be done well. However, self-built factories can ensure production capacity, but it does not mean that production technology must keep up.
Therefore, in the case that the quality control problem cannot be solved, Weimar's brand power has been finalized, and it is very difficult to get it back.
Since then, Weimar has released three models, namely EX6, W6 and E5, but none of them have reproduced the "sales champion" of EX5. In addition, these models are still developed on the basis of the first generation architecture and platform, which means that the glitches on the EX5 will continue to the new models again.
Some media reported that the launch of the second generation platform was delayed because Weimar's R&D funds were insufficient. According to the prospectus, in the past three years, the proportion of R&D investment in Weimar Automobile has continued to decline. In 20 19, 2020 and 20021year, Weimar's R&D investment was 893 million yuan, 992 million yuan and 98 10/00000 yuan respectively, accounting for 50.7%, 37.0% and 20.7% of the revenue in the same period.
In contrast, Weilai's R&D investment reached 4.592 billion yuan in 202 1. Even Nezha Auto, which is in the second echelon, announced that it will invest 2 billion yuan in R&D last year. Another second-tier player, Zero Run, announced that he would achieve the goal of "self-research of the whole vehicle", and successively launched CTC technology, Lingxin 0 1 self-research chips and other products.
In the face of such "stingy" R&D investment, it is not surprising that Weimar is backward.
Thanks to the working experience of car companies, Freeman Shen recruited many car talents at the beginning of Weimar's establishment, most of them came from its old club Geely, which led Weimar to bear the strong label of "domestic traditional car companies" and decided to launch the concept of "smart electric vehicles that consumers can afford and use well", focusing on cost performance.
The idea of making a civilian car itself is not bad, just like Xiaomi's flagship mobile phone 1999 yuan, and feel the experience of smart car at a very cost-effective price. This model can easily become an explosion. However, the competition in the "10-200,000" mass market where Weimar EX5 is located has been extremely fierce. There are not only independent brands and joint venture brands, but also opportunities to buy entry-level models of luxury brands such as BMW and Audi. Although Weimar EX5 can open the market by "electric car", it will soon hit the ceiling at this price due to quality problems.
Interestingly, although Nezha and Zero Run are based on "cost performance", their ideas are different from Weimar's. The former first tested the water from the B end, and then entered the C end market, while the latter successfully enclosed T03 with a zero run of less than 65,438+10,000 yuan. Compared with Weimar, Nezha and Zero Run have better sales and fewer quality problems. However, in terms of brand awareness and financing ability, Weimar is obviously better.
Of course, Weimar seems to have begun to make some changes in product positioning. For example, Weimar M7, which will be mass-produced and delivered in the second half of this year, changed its previous positioning of "cost performance" and turned its propaganda selling point into "intelligence".
However, it is worth mentioning that Weimar's core technology adopts the mode of cooperation with technology enterprises, which is not in Weimar's own hands. For the new forces, the lack of core technology is ultimately a great hidden danger.
Generally speaking, under the situation that there are strong opponents in front and suitors behind, Weimar thinks it is difficult to shake the top three positions of "Wei Xiaoli" by several old-fashioned models.
Therefore, we have to see through Weimar's real idea of sprinting to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange: Faced with huge losses, Weimar urgently needs to go public, raise funds from the secondary market and complete blood transfusion.
On the surface, Weimar's competitors are second-tier new brands such as Nezha and Zero Run, but in fact they are so-called "traditional car companies" such as BYD, SAIC, Great Wall and Geely. Their brand of new energy vehicles not only has stable funds, but also has several years of technical accumulation, which has gradually gained the favor of the market.
Of course, this is not just a problem that Weimar has to face, but a problem that three new second-line forces have to solve.
After the big waves, the second-line new forces were lucky, and they gained their own market share. But at the same time, they are also unfortunate. In the case of food shortage, the new second-line troops should consider how to ensure their respective achievements.
From the current point of view, the advantages of new energy car companies are not great. During the past "new energy sales winter", independent brands such as BYD withstood the pressure to maintain sales, while new forces fell into a sales trough. For the top three of "Wei Xiaoli", the financing channels have been broadened, profits have been realized and sales have been guaranteed. But for the second-tier new forces, not selling cars means continuing to burn investors' money, which is definitely not a healthy development in the long run.
Recently, Weimar Automobile has just completed nearly $600 million in Pre-IPO financing. Up to now, public data shows that the accumulated financing amount is about 35 billion yuan. According to the prospectus, Weimar borrowed two loans from China Commercial Bank, totaling 654.38 billion yuan, with a term of two years. At the same time, the data also shows that the company borrowed 2.42 billion yuan, 6.465438 billion yuan and 6.5438 billion yuan respectively in the past three years.
The financing scale is more than 35 billion, and it is necessary to borrow from banks and go public for financing, which is enough to show that Weimar is short of money.