On December 22, the latest information on the official website of the Shanghai Stock Exchange showed that the status of the IPO application of SVOLT Energy Science and Technology Innovation Board was updated to "terminated". Previously, SVOLT Energy once became the largest IPO under review on the Science and Technology Innovation Board due to the amount of funds raised as high as 15 billion yuan. Therefore, SVOLT Energy's sudden termination of the A-share IPO has caused a lot of speculation from the outside world.
Honeycomb Energy responded to the voluntary withdrawal of the application, saying: "As one of the top ten domestic power battery enterprises, Honeycomb Energy's business has continued to improve in the past few years. ”
SVOLT has always been regarded as a rising star and a dark horse in the industry, with a strong development momentum, and it has been good in the past six months. Such as winning the BMW European super order;and a battery plant in Thailand that has entered into a cooperation agreement with Banpu Next, a subsidiary of Thai energy giant Banpu Group. At the product level, SVOLT will also reap a lot in 2023, and its short-knife battery cells have even overshadowed the limelight of CATL.
In addition, from the perspective of the financing performance of the primary market, SVOLT has completed seven rounds of financing before sprinting to the Science and Technology Innovation Board, with a cumulative amount of more than 20 billion yuan, and most of the investment institutions behind it are well-known names in the industry such as Country Garden Venture Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group.
From the perspective of partners, SVOLT's power batteries are supplied to many car companies, including Great Wall, Leapmotor, Ideal L7, VOYAH Chasing Light, Galaxy, Lynk & Co and other models, and the "circle of friends" can be described as extremely luxurious.
It stands to reason that such a honeycomb energy is unlikely to have an oolong incident of listing and withdrawal. Therefore, the outside world is particularly curious about the "helpless move" it declares.
01 Industry rookies failed to catch the last train of IPO
Honeycomb Energy and Great Wall Motors always appear together, the reason is that Honeycomb Energy was born out of the power battery division of Great Wall - in 2012, Great Wall Motors established a power battery project team, and in 2018 registered an independent company, it is a rising star in the domestic market in recent years.
Founded five years ago, this lithium battery rookie, whether it is production capacity, customers and technical reserve capacity, has made the industry look sideways, and has become a proper industry dark horse.
According to the statistics of the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, in the first half of this year, Honeycomb Energy ranked sixth in the loading volume of domestic power battery enterprises.
In the capital market, SVOLT's financing ability is equally amazing. In the past year, it has received four financings, and so far, its valuation has reached nearly 60 billion yuan.
As an upstart in the industry, he has an extraordinary background. In 2012, Great Wall Motor set up a power battery project team to carry out pre-research on battery cells, modules, packs, BMS and other related core technologies. In the following years, with the strong support of policies, China's new energy vehicle sales have been rising. In 2016, the project team was upgraded to a power lithium battery-related business unit.
In 2018, the global new energy vehicles ushered in explosive growth, and global automobile manufacturing giants have announced electric vehicle plans. In 2018, Wei Jianjun, the "head" of Great Wall Motors, began to adjust its strategic and organizational structure. At this time, the power battery company Honeycomb Energy was spun off from Great Wall Motors.
In the eyes of the outside world, this is Wei Jianjun's "big gamble". In the prospectus information submitted this year, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, controls a total of 40 percent of Honeycomb Energy through Baoding Ruimao and Great Wall Holdings26% equity, a total of 76 control of the company81% of the voting rights are the actual controllers of SVOLT.
From the start of the race, SVOLT has been moving forward with a high acceleration. According to data from SNE, a third-party market research agency, in 2021, the installed capacity of SVOLT power batteries increased by more than 430% year-on-year, ranking among the top 10 in the world with a market share of 1%. In July this year, data released by the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance showed that Honeycomb Energy was rated at 244% of the proportion ranks sixth in the loading volume of domestic power battery enterprises.
However, as the sixth largest domestic power battery installed company, SVOLT is also the last company among the top ten companies to submit an IPO.
This somewhat makes the outside world a little uneasy.
02 Eager to tear off the "Great Wall label".
For a long time, the emergence of honeycomb energy has always had the shadow of "Great Wall Motors" behind it.
It is undeniable that Honeycomb Energy, which was born out of Great Wall Motors, has a very high starting point, but at the same time, it has also fallen into the question of "success is also the Great Wall, defeat is also the Great Wall".
In recent years, questions such as "over-reliance on Great Wall Motors" have often arisen. The most obvious point is that a considerable part of SVOLT's transaction volume in recent years has come from Great Wall Motors and its subsidiaries.
According to the prospectus, from 2019 to the first half of last year, this part of the amount was 81.2 billion yuan, 164.9 billion yuan, 36$6.1 billion and $198.3 billion yuan, accounting for the total revenue of each period. 37 and 5695％。It can also be found that since the establishment of Honeycomb Energy for a few years, Great Wall Motors has supported it greatly. Although this proportion is indeed declining year by year, it has never been lower than 50%, and the proportion is too high.
After the formal acceptance of SVOLT's IPO, the Shanghai Stock Exchange conducted a round of inquiries on SVOLT Energy, which pointed to this issue and asked SVOLT to explain whether it still met the listing conditions after deducting the related sales of Great Wall MotorsWhether there is a transfer of benefits to the company or related parties, or adjustment of income, profits or costs through related party transactions;Whether there are related-party transactions that seriously harm fairness.
If we want to maintain high-quality development in the future, "de-Great Wall" is the only way for SVOLT Energy.
Judging from the recent year's dynamics, SVOLT has indeed been committed to "de-greatwalling". As shown in the prospectus, SVOLT Energy has reached cooperation agreements with Geely, Dongfeng, VOYAH, Xiaopeng, Ideal and other vehicle companies. At the same time, after receiving a large order from BMW, SVOLT is one step closer to the above goals.
However, from the current actual results, Great Wall Motors is still a major customer of SVOLT, which also means that in order to truly break this dependence, SVOLT's current customer contribution value is far from enough.
03 The loss problem needs to be solved
In addition to its dependence on Great Wall Motors, SVOLT also has a long-standing problem - the loss problem faced by the industry.
According to the prospectus data of SVOLT Energy, in the past three years, while SVOLT Energy's operating income has grown rapidly, its net loss has also continued to expand.
From 2019 to the first half of 2022, SVOLT achieved revenue of 92.9 billion yuan, 173.6 billion yuan, 447.4 billion and 373.8 billion yuan. However, the net profit for the same period was -32.6 billion yuan, -70.1 billion yuan, -115.4 billion and -89.7 billion yuanThe cumulative loss exceeded 3 billion yuan.
SVOLT said that the company has not yet made a profit and has accumulated unmade losses, mainly due to factors such as high R&D investment intensity, capacity ramp-up and raw material procurement.
As for gross margin, a key indicator of profitability, SVOLT has also performed unsatisfactorily. In the last three years, SVOLT's gross profit margins have been: 57%。Although it is improving year by year, it is completely insufficient compared with CATL, EVE Lithium Energy, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and other enterprises. The gross profit margin of these companies has generally exceeded 15%, and SVOLT has less than one-third of it.
SVOLT Energy's explanation for this is that the company's capacity utilization rate is low, cathode materials are high, in addition, the capacity utilization rate is low, the scale effect is affected, and the cost and bargaining power are low, all of which have an impact on the gross profit margin of SVOLT.
In the short term, it is difficult to completely get rid of the over-dependence on Great Wall Motors, and its own profitability is weak, which are all helpless reasons for Honeycomb Energy to break through the IPO and make substantial progress for a while.
It is reported that from 2019 to the first half of 2022, SVOLT's net cash flow from operating activities was 27.2 billion yuan, 14.1 billion yuan, 3500 million yuan, -2100 million yuan. In addition to waiting for the increase in business sales revenue to improve profit expectations, SVOLT now still relies on equity financing, debt financing and other means to obtain the required external cash flow.
04 It may be wiser not to follow the old path
In recent years, with the changes in the market and policy direction, the achievements of many companies in the new energy and energy storage track are obvious to the outside world, such as the gross profit margin of the industry's leading players CATL, EVE Lithium Energy, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and other companies have generally exceeded 15%. But today, the new energy and energy storage industry has undergone very big changes, and the future of SVOLT is destined to be more bumpy than that of its predecessors.
In the opinion of Yidu Pro, there are at least three reasons
First, in recent years, the domestic new energy track has serious overcapacity and serious involution
Second, the competition in the new energy market is very fierce, and it is very difficult for companies from all walks of life to win across the border
Third, although it has received international orders, it is not easy for SVOLT to achieve a performance turnaround in the short term.
Since the end of 2022, the new energy track has begun to show signs of weakness. At the beginning of this year, the sales of new energy vehicles stalled, which directly hit market confidence. According to the data of the Passenger Association and other institutions, the sales of new energy passenger vehicles in the country in January this year were 3320,000 units, down 6 percent year-on-year3%, down 483%。
Specific to various car companies, most of them cannot escape the fate of declining sales. BYD is still in the dust, but it is also down 36% from the end of 2022. Ideal was the best performer among the new forces, with more than 150,000 units, up 23% y/y, but down 29% m/mNIO and XPeng both fell by about 50% month-on-monthLast year's up-and-comers, such as Extreme Krypton and Leap, showed a decline in popularity, with a month-on-month increase of 73% and 87% respectively.
From the perspective of the industry, in the past two years, the new energy track has entered a period of rapid growth from the introduction period, and has completed a breakthrough from 0 to 1. But in the process of going from 1 to 10 to 100, it is inevitable that the track will become more and more crowded. Especially in the context of the slowdown in the overall demand growth of the new energy track, more cruel survival of the fittest is inevitable.
Then, for SVOLT, it may not be the best choice to go public at this point in time. It may be imperative to get rid of the dependence on Great Wall Motors as soon as possible, expand its business boundaries and strengthen its profitability.
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