Is there no electricity when the electric car is hot?
Text/gale
Editor/Chen Momo
Over the years, China has led the world in the production and purchase of electric vehicles. These cars are the result of a lot of subsidies, although there are also some cases of poor quality. In this market, there are a lot of running brands. These companies lack a strong sales network, but they have their own inherent advantages, such as the best battery supply or more advanced software than their competitors.
In the overwhelming situation of new energy, many automobile manufacturers are exceeding their production targets and trying to achieve "harvest" with this trend. On December 13th, 2022, Geely Automobile officially announced to the public that its high-end electric vehicle sub-brand Kykrypton had submitted its IPO registration documents to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on December 7th, 2022, and planned to be listed in new york as early as the second quarter of 2023. It is rumored that krypton is valued at around $10 billion. This indicates that this new car company, which was established less than two years ago and hatched by traditional car companies, has begun to break through the IPO of US stocks.
There are several basic elements to highlight the tight encirclement. First of all, the new forces must find a niche market that can be used as a starting point for expansion. Then, it is necessary to have the ability to mass-produce cars and break through the bottleneck of production capacity. Finally, it is necessary to create a relatively mature sales and distribution network. It is more important to choose the right market segment, provide something really different and put your own technical mark on it.
Obviously, krypton still has a big gap in these aspects.
1 sales scenery can not hide financial weakness
2022 is a successful year for krypton cars. With only one model of Kykrypton 001, Kykrypton delivered a total of 71,941 vehicles throughout the year, with an average order amount exceeding 336,000 yuan. In December, Kykrypton continued to win the title of "sales champion of pure electric vehicles of China brand with more than 300,000".
In 2023, Extreme Krypton will not only launch its second model, Extreme Krypton 009, but also replace the Kirin battery. The 2023 Extreme Krypton 001 with a battery life of more than 1,000 kilometers will also be put on the market. In terms of overseas market layout, on the one hand, it began to sell cars designed by Mobileye and equipped with NZP high-speed autonomous navigation assistance system in Europe; on the other hand, the unmanned application scenario developed based on ZEEKR M-Vision concept car is the exclusive travel service products created by Waymone driverless team, which will also begin to gradually land. The quality of the car will be further recognized by overseas customers.
Compared with other new forces, there is not much financing before the IPO. Its latest round of financing was the $500 million Pre-A round of financing completed in August 2021. At that time, the valuation of Krypton cars reached $9 billion. Therefore, after the substantial increase in sales in 2022, the valuation of Krypton did not increase significantly, which shows that under the influence of the potential global financial crisis, the US stock market with abundant funds is not optimistic.
As the first batch of new forces in China, Wei Xiaoli also chose American stocks as the main battlefield of her IPO before making a profit. From the establishment of the company to the IPO, the three companies took four years, six years and five years respectively. In contrast, it has only been two years since its establishment. Judging from the valuation, although Krypton’s performance is much better than that of Wei Xiaoli at that time, and there is strong support from traditional car giants like Geely, there is still a clear gap in market value. The current valuation of Krypton is only $10 billion, which is about 70 billion yuan. At that time, Weilai’s valuation reached 134 billion, and the ideal valuation was 156.7 billion yuan. However, compared with the valuation of zero-running cars listed in Hong Kong stocks last year, Krypton is still much higher.
It turns out that it is difficult to make a profit by mass-producing electric vehicles. In terms of sales volume and company revenue, there is still a certain gap between Krypton and Wei Xiaoli. In 2022, Xpeng Motors, which has the lowest sales volume among Wei Xiaoli, has delivered more than 120,000 vehicles, and the vehicle matrix of the three car companies of Wei Xiaoli has been relatively complete. Therefore, in terms of revenue, in the first half of 2022, Wei Xiaoli’s revenue reached 20.2 billion, 14.8 billion and 18.2 billion respectively, while the extremely poor revenue in the same period was only 8.8 billion. As for the level of gross profit margin, in the first half of 2022, Krypton took two years to turn the gross profit margin into a positive one and reached about 5%, which was much better than that of Wei Xiaoli in the same period, but the current situation is that Wei Xiaoli’s gross profit margin has reached 13.8%, 11.55% and 22.09% respectively.
In terms of losses, in 2021 and the first half of 2022, the polar net losses reached 1.01 billion yuan and 759 million yuan respectively. In just one and a half years, Krypton has lost as much as 1.769 billion yuan. For a brand-new car company that has just been established, if it is not supported by Geely Automobile through its system capabilities, the loss will probably be even greater. But even so, whether it is the development and production of new models, brand promotion and sales channel construction, it needs to invest a lot of money, and these funds have begun to put obvious pressure on Geely Automobile listed in Hong Kong stocks. In the first half of 2021-2022, the net profit of Geely Automobile was 4.847 billion yuan and 1.552 billion yuan respectively, and the year-on-year decline rate of net profit reached 12.4% and 34.81% respectively. Such a sharp decline is not only related to Geely’s own performance, but also to the large amount of investment required for extremely krypton cars.
2 advantages and disadvantages of listing US stocks
Obviously, under the circumstances that the valuation is not high due to the poor environment, it is closely related to the situation of Krypton itself that it still seeks to be listed in the US stock market.
Before Krypton, the impact on science and technology innovation board’s listing was unsuccessful. At the earliest, Geely Automobile hoped to return to science and technology innovation board to raise enough funds for itself, but later science and technology innovation board did not open the door for Geely. Then Geely Automobile gave Krypton the quota to hit science and technology innovation board, but from the current situation, Krypton’s scientific and technological attributes have not been recognized by the regulatory authorities. As an industry with heavy capital and assets, the future sustainable development of Krypton still needs to continuously inject a large amount of funds, which may not be completed by Geely Automobile alone. By listing in US stocks with relatively higher valuation and better liquidity, you can naturally get greater returns than listing in Hong Kong stocks.
However, the potential political risks faced by going to the United States for listing are also factors that have to be considered. On the one hand, vehicle companies like Krypton need to deal with a lot of personal information, and if it involves autonomous driving, it will produce more surveying and mapping data. At this time, it is necessary to find a method acceptable to both regulators under the two major judicial systems of China and the United States. On the other hand, global competition between China and the United States is inevitable. No one can guarantee whether the United States will exert the same extreme pressure on enterprises like Krypton as it did on Huawei in the past. In this case, let alone state-owned enterprises listed in the US stock market have chosen to review the listing of Hong Kong stocks/China mainland’s own securities market, and reserve a financing channel for themselves. Even private car companies like Wei Xiaoli have already completed the secondary listing in Hong Kong stocks. Therefore, listing in the US stock market is definitely not the end of extreme krypton. Finding more stable financing channels for yourself may be the strategy that needs to be considered in the next step.
In the past two years, many companies under Geely Group have completed listing. From Volvo cars and polar star cars to Yikatong and Krypton, there may be Lotus cars, Cao Cao trips and long-distance cars soon. Promoting the listing of its enterprises is a shortcut to reduce its capital contribution burden. However, in the current environment, both valuation and potential political risks need to be weighed by Geely Group. The road ahead is not easy. Especially for krypton cars, after most car companies in the world have made clear the development direction of pure electric, the competition facing krypton will become more and more fierce. If there is no solid sales as a support, even if Krypton has completed the listing of US stocks, its prospects will be bleak.
3 alleged quality problems and sales fraud are frequently defended by car owners.
At present, there are only two models on sale, namely "Extreme Krypton 001" and "Extreme Krypton 009", in which the former is the main sales model and has both coupe and SUV attributes; The latter is positioned in pure electric luxury MPV.
According to a number of media reports, there are online videos showing that four "extremely krypton 001" cars with the words "power failure, electric door failure" passed directly from the door of extremely krypton store.
Since January, 2023, on the official app of Krypton and the national complaint platform for defective products, a large number of Krypton owners have reported that there is a power system failure in Krypton 001 (configuration | inquiry). The vehicle will suddenly jump out of the dashboard when the cold car is started and driving, and the power is limited, so it can’t drive, and the esc is abnormal. And complaints about the unilateral tampering with the contents of the car purchase agreement by extreme manufacturers. The number of complaints about krypton brands has increased significantly, with 639 complaints involving krypton 001, ranking first among all brands.
Coincidentally, "Extreme Krypton 009" also has problems. According to the black cat complaint platform, "Extreme Krypton 009 is forced to lock the order and is not transferable. However, according to the agreement, it is transferable. Now it is against the agreement to tell that it is not transferable. It is a overlord clause to force the lock order without any real car.
In addition, according to the news a few days ago, a picture of a car blogger broke the news, showing that many car owners were sitting at the door of the extreme experience store to defend their rights. These car owners said: "Extreme sales routines defraud consumers and demand a refund!" . At present, more than 2,000 big car owners have complained together, and their demands are still increasing: unilateral breach of contract, unilateral tampering with the contract without consulting the car owners, loss of confidence in the car companies, and demand a refund for one.
In this regard, there is no relevant response from the extreme.
On the car quality website of the car complaint platform, there have been a lot of complaints about Krypton 001 recently, and almost all the reasons for the complaints are "Krypton manufacturers unilaterally tampering with the contents of the car purchase agreement". According to the owner of the complaint, in order to dispel consumers’ doubts about buying the first new energy vehicle, the first new energy vehicle has been introduced to enjoy the lifetime warranty of the whole vehicle and the preferential policy of the current order price, and the owner is not restricted from modifying the order. The premise is that under the negotiation of both parties, users can change the vehicle configuration plan before locking the order. Until December 2022, the official is still promoting that all models can enjoy a lifetime warranty.
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