At the end of the year, a super financing was born.
The investment community learned that yesterday (December 18), NIO officially announced a new financing from Abu Dhabi investment institution CCYVN Holdings (hereinafter referred to as "CYVN") a new round of strategic investment, with a total amount of about 2.2 billion US dollars (about RMB).15 billion yuan
This is the second time that CYVN has invested in NIO this year. In July this year, CYVN made a strategic investment of about US$1.1 billion in NIO. In other words, in just half a year, the Middle Eastern giant has spent 3.3 billion US dollars to "buy" NIO, which is about 23 billion yuan, which is quite domineering.
Affected by this news, NIO's U.S. stock rose nearly 700 million US dollars (nearly 5 billion yuan) overnight.
Since the beginning of this year, we have seen that Middle Eastern consortiums have intensively invested in China's new energy vehicle field, which is also a microcosm of the Middle East sweeping China, creating the most lively scene in 2023.
15 billion, the UAE giants voted for NIO
Li Bin is no longer the largest shareholder
Let's start with a Middle Eastern giant.
According to public information, CYVN is an investment institution majority-owned by Abu Dhabi**, United Arab Emirates, with a strategic focus on the smart mobility industry. Founded in 2022, the goal is to invest in global industry leaders in the field.
In July this year, CYVN has invested in NIO to become a shareholder of NIO, and has completed a strategic investment of about US$1.1 billion in NIO through private placement of new shares and transfer of old shares. In less than half a year, CYVN has further increased its weight, and the scale of the new round of strategic investment will reach 2.2 billion US dollars.
According to the agreement, CYVN's investment in NIO will be in cash, and the transaction** will be 7. per share$50, the number of shares subscribed is 29.4 billion new Class A ordinary shares of the Company. The transaction is expected to close in the last week of December.
Following the completion of the transaction, CYVN will hold approximately 201%, becoming the largest single shareholder of NIO. At the same time, at the time of the closing of the investment transaction in December, if the shareholding ratio is indeed not less than 15%, CYVN will have the right to nominate two directors to NIO's board of directors.
However, Li Bin is still the single shareholder with the largest voting rights, and is still the actual controller of NIO, with control over the company.
After the completion of this investment, NIO and CYVN will continue to carry out strategic and technical cooperation in the international market. Jassem Al Zaabi, Chairman and Managing Director of CYVN, said: "Increasing our strategic investment in NIO is in line with our strategy to build a world-leading portfolio in the mobility sector. This investment demonstrates our confidence in NIO's unique positioning and competitiveness in the global smart electric vehicle industry." We are pleased to be a long-term strategic partner of NIO and support its unremitting efforts in product innovation, technological breakthroughs and international market expansion." ”
Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, said that with the strengthening of its balance sheet, NIO is fully prepared to cope with the increasingly fierce competitive landscape, and continues to improve its execution efficiency and systematization capabilities while strengthening its brand positioning, improving its sales and service capabilities, and making long-term investments in core technologies. "We are confident that NIO will further strengthen its leading position in the transformation of the global automotive industry. ”
As soon as the news came out, NIO owners ridiculed.
After Li Bin issued an all-staff letter in early November announcing that he would lay off 10% of its workforce, there was a lot of news about NIO's plan to expand the scale of layoffs. At a ** communication meeting last week, Li Bin appeared and denied it. He said that the personnel adjustment has ended, and NIO has indeed merged some departments with duplicate functions, but the expansion of the scale of layoffs is fake news. In terms of intelligence and sales, NIO will still maintain its existing team or expand its team size.
He further said, "There is not enough internal estimation of external risks and the risks of the company's operations. If risks can be accurately estimated, then more measures, including sales capacity improvement and organizational adjustments, will be carried out at an earlier time. ”
Referring to the current pattern of new energy vehicles, Li Bin reminded that it must be very tragic to give up illusions about the fierce competition in the market. "In fact, survival is not the only goal of NIO, the company must survive and enter the finals. To reach the finals, you still need to win this game. ”
Li Bin emphasized that the automotive industry is an industry that needs strong products and strong technologies to drive, so NIO should be prepared to run a marathon. As for the upcoming 2024, Li Bin admitted that he only has one expectation to sell his car.
Middle Eastern tycoons
Sweeping China's new energy vehicles
We see that the Middle East giants are intensively selling China's new energy vehicles.
In October this year, ARCFOX Automobile, a subsidiary of BAIC Blue Valley, signed a cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates' Benomer Group, and the two sides plan to jointly develop the two Middle Eastern markets of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In June, Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment signed an agreement worth SAR 21 billion (about 40 billion yuan) with Chinese electric vehicle maker Human Horizons to establish a joint venture to develop, manufacture and sell vehicles.
A few days later, Great Wall Huaguan, the parent company of Qiantu Auto, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Manaseer Group, Jordan's largest private company. According to the agreement, the two companies will jointly establish a joint venture in Jordan. The company will localize and improve the Qiantu K50, K20 and K25 and sell them in the Middle East and North Africa market.
Earlier in March, Geely Automobile announced that Geely Holdings, Renault, Saudi Aramco and Geely Automobile had signed a letter of intent for oil company Saudi Aramco to acquire a minority stake in the joint venture in the form of a cash investment. If all goes well, the deal will make Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, the first major oil producer to invest in the automotive business.
In addition, Tianji Motor established a joint venture with Saudi company Sumou Holding, and Pony.ai received a $100 million investment from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's New Future City (NEOM) and its investment **NIF (NEOM Investment Fund).
A set of incomplete data statistics, at least already in 20239Chinese auto companies received bets from Middle Eastern capital, and the cumulative investment amount was exceeded50 billion yuan
It is not difficult to find that most of the investments made by Middle Eastern consortiums are car companies in relatively difficult situations. Even the stormy Evergrande Automobile, in the latest round of strategic financing also appeared in the Middle East consortium, and even the new energy vehicle brand Faraday Future founded by Jia Yueting has also signed a relevant cooperation agreement with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office.
For Middle East investors, they are more emphasizing the industrialization of new energy vehicle companies in the Middle East. All these reflect the determination of Middle Eastern countries to vigorously develop the local new energy vehicle industry.
The logic is not difficult to understand. As we all know, the Middle East is rich in oil, and this hot land has left people with inherent labels such as rich, desert, and oil. But oil, as a non-renewable resource, is not inexhaustible. As a result, the Middle East began to seek transformation, and a war for the upgrading of the new energy industry was launched.
For example, Saudi Arabia has put forward its "Vision 2030", which plans to increase the proportion of non-oil energy exports in GDP from 16% to 50%. In addition, Saudi Arabia also plans that 30% of the cars in the capital Riyadh are new energy vehicles. "Financial Magazine" has reported that Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth**'s investment in electric vehicle manufacturers is one of the important assessment criteria for Saudi Arabia's ****.
In China, the new energy vehicle market has become increasingly mature. In addition to the three new energy vehicle giants of Wei Xiaoli, there are also old car companies such as BYD, Wuling, and Geely, as well as Huawei, Xiaomi, and other industry leaders who have joined the car-making army. From the perspective of the world, investing in China's new energy vehicles is a relatively optimal choice.
So there was such a sceneMiddle Eastern tyrants sweep Chinese car companies
The hottest scene:
Middle Eastern consortiums line up to come to China
Looking at it, the Middle East consortium has made a big impression on us this year.
The latest event was the China-Saudi Arabia Investment Summit in Beijing on December 12. At the meeting, Li Fei, Vice Minister of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, and Khaled Al-Falih, Minister of Arab Investment, exchanged views and discussed China-Saudi Arabia cooperation, and witnessed the signing of more than 60 memorandums of understanding and agreements.
According to local reports, the total value of these cooperation agreements is about 25 billion US dollars, covering a variety of sectors such as esports, energy, agriculture, tourism, mining and finance. Among them, the Saudi Esports Federation and the Chinese e-sports event operator VSPO signed a memorandum of cooperation worth US$8.5 billionDonghua Energy signed a cooperation agreement worth US$7.5 billion with a Saudi company.
During this period, Ajlan Brothers Holding Group from Saudi Arabia announced that it has signed strategic cooperation agreements with a number of Chinese enterprises, involving cloud computing, intelligent driving, data centers, environmental science, aviation and other fields, aiming to introduce more advanced technologies into the Middle East.
Speaking at the conference, Khaled Al-Falih said that Saudi Arabia is trying to catch up with the global clean energy transition, which provides a lot of cooperation opportunities for Chinese companies. He called on Chinese companies to consider Saudi Arabia's "huge needs" and urged China to participate in Saudi Arabia's housing, urban development, smart city and other projects: "We invite Chinese companies to participate in the green transformation ...... chainIn addition to investment, both in our capital and throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there is a huge amount of project work there that requires the involvement of Chinese project execution and project management companies. ”
Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's energy minister, said, "The reality today is that China has been leading [in many areas] and will continue to be at the top." So we don't have to put ourselves in a position to compete with China, we have to put ourselves in a position to cooperate with China. ”
This is a microcosm of this year's Middle East fever. Looking back on 2023, Middle Eastern consortia have accelerated their deployment in China, and there are big moves almost every other month. In addition to "buying, buying, buying", we have also seen these giants intensively set up new offices in China, and even landed localized teams in China.
The latest news comes from Saudi Public Investment (PIF), the country's largest sovereign wealth. At the recent FII Priority Asia Summit in Hong Kong, Pif's head Yasser Rumaiyan revealed an important message: PIF plans to open an additional office in Chinese mainland.
Prior to this, Mubadala officially opened its China office in Chaoyang, Beijing, in September this yearAbu Dhabi Investment Office opened an office in Beijing in 2021;The UAE G42 Expansion Fund, which was established just last year, has set up an office in Shanghai this year, under the responsibility of Hu Ningfeng, the former head of JD.com's strategic investment departmentThe Deputy Minister of Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment (MISA) also revealed this year that he intends to open an office in the Greater Bay Area. All of a sudden, the sovereign wealth of the Middle East poured into China.
Oil**"Fierce rise, with a steady stream of living water. HKEX Chief Executive Nicolas Aguzin recently said in a public event that the top 10 sovereign wealth** in the Middle East currently have about $4 trillion in assets under management, of which $40 billion is invested in China. This is expected to expand to $10 trillion by 2030, with 10% of nearly $1 trillion in China.
All of this is a very historic scene, and it also outlines the most memorable scene of China's economy in 2023.