I am a technology creator Alibaba, which has adhered to Xpeng Motors for six years, finally chose to "retreat".
According to U.S. Exchange Commission filings, on December 16, Alibaba's **China plans to sell 25 million U.S. shares of Xpeng Motors, with a total value of about 39.1 billion US dollars, equivalent to more than 2.8 billion yuan. Affected by the worst, on December 18, the Hong Kong stock price of Xiaopeng Motors fell by more than 7%, and finally fell by 666%；As of December 22**, Xpeng's Hong Kong stock price closed at 5345 Hong Kong dollars shares, the share price fell by 20 in December alone46%。
For the reason, Alibaba's explanation is that "in order to achieve the company's own capital management goals, it is not a change in the view of the prospects of Xiaopeng Motors", but it is clear that this is only an official reply, and the fundamental reason for Alibaba's ** Xiaopeng Motors may still be out of concern and concern about the future development of Xiaopeng Motors.
As the second largest shareholder of Xpeng Motors, Alibaba has invested in Xpeng Motors since 2017, and now it has been 6 years, but Xpeng Motors has not yet shaken off the loss, and Xpeng's leading edge in intelligent driving has become less and less obvious.
The end of the year is approaching, Xiaopeng Motors does not hesitate to open a large price reduction for the whole series in order to impact sales, which is in stark contrast to the "Huawei series" that also focuses on intelligent driving but continues to rise in sales, coupled with Alibaba's recent large-scale **, there is not a lot of time left for Xiaopeng.
The relationship between Xpeng and Alibaba can be traced back to 2014.
At that time, Xpeng Motors had just been established, and He Xiaopeng, as the president of Ali Mobile's business group, was an investor in Xpeng Motors.
In 2017, He Xiaopeng left Alibaba to join Xpeng Motors to start a business, and Alibaba immediately invested in Xpeng Motors and became the second largest shareholder.
On August 27, 2020, Xpeng Motors was successfully listed on the U.S. stock market. According to the data, before the listing, Xpeng Motors went through a total of three rounds of financing, and the A round came from Alibaba Group and He Xiaopeng himself;The A1 round is a joint investment by GGV Capital, Morningside Capital, IDG, Jingwei Capital, Shunwei Capital and CEL Zhongying CapitalThe A2 round includes Xinding Capital, Kunzhong Capital and Lightspeed Ventures. In addition, before going public, Alibaba, Hillhouse, Sequoia and others also participated in a round of financing totaling more than $900 million.
According to the prospectus, the management shareholding ratio of Xpeng Motors before the U.S. stock IPO was 409%, of which He Xiaopeng holds 316%, which is the largest shareholder of Xpeng Motors;Alibaba holds 144%, is the largest external shareholder of Xpeng Motors, and other major external shareholders include Xiaomi, G** GGV Capital, Morningside Capital and so on.
Since the beginning of the investment in Xpeng Motors in 2017, Alibaba's investment has passed 6 years, during which the share price of Xpeng Motors has experienced both a sharp fall and a sharp rise, but Alibaba does not have a stake in Xpeng Motors, and it is not planned to sell 25 million shares of Xpeng Motors in the United States until the end of this year.
Why would Alibaba choose to take a stake in Xpeng Motors at this time?
Behind it is not only the factor that Alibaba chooses to return to its main business and reduce foreign investment, but also has a lot to do with the operating conditions of Xpeng Motors itself. Since its establishment in 2014, Xiaopeng Motors has been born for 9 years, but now Xiaopeng Motors has not yet achieved profitability, judging from the latest financial report, the cumulative loss of Xiaopeng Motors in the first three quarters of this year reached 902.8 billion, compared with a loss of 67 in the same period last year7.8 billion compared to a significant increase.
From the current point of view, the elimination of new energy vehicles has just begun.
Just as He Xiaopeng said, "In the field of smart cars, the next three years will be the most cruel three years, but also the most promising three years." However, Xiaopeng Motors, which has been established for 9 years, is still in a state of loss, and it is still far from the profit target.
From the current point of view, Xpeng Motors is the most difficult of the three new car-making forces.
On the one hand, Xpeng Motors is still in the red. As mentioned in the content above, in the first three quarters of this year, Xpeng Motors lost a total of 902.8 billion, and from 2019 to 2022, Xpeng Motors lost 464.3 billion, 48900 million, 486.3 billion and 913.9 billion, and the cumulative loss of Xiaopeng Motors has reached 325 in less than 5 years6.3 billion.
The continuous performance loss has put a lot of pressure on Xpeng's cash flow. According to the financial report, the net increase in cash and cash equivalents of Xpeng Motors in the first half of this year was -302.8 billion, net cash flow from operating activities was -622.2 billion, net cash flow from operating activities was -622.2 billion, cash flow outflow. As of the third quarter of this year, XPeng's cash and cash equivalents were 1219.8 billion, but short-term borrowings in current liabilities are 500.4 billion, the pressure of debt is quite high.
On the other hand, with the rise of the "Huawei system", Xpeng Motors' leading edge in the field of intelligence is gradually losing. At the beginning of November, He Xiaopeng and Huawei's Yu Chengdong launched a fierce battle over AEB technology. Although the incident has now subsided, it is not difficult to see that with the rise of the "Huawei system", Xpeng Motors has been greatly challenged.
At the time of its establishment, Xpeng Motors focused on intelligence. In order to be able to build a moat intelligently, Xpeng Motors has invested a lot of money in R&D over the years, and the R&D investment from 2019 to 2022 is 20700 million, 172.6 billion, 411.4 billion and 521.5 billion, with a cumulative investment of more than 13 billion. With a huge amount of capital investment and first-mover advantage, Xpeng Motors is the first car company to be labeled as "intelligent" among the new car-making forces.
However, with the rise of the "Huawei system", Xpeng's leading edge in the field of intelligence has become smaller and smaller, and some fields have even been surpassed.
From the perspective of the most important intelligent driving technology, from the three directions of "algorithm, computing power, and data", Huawei has a trend of surpassing Xpeng.
In terms of algorithms, Xpeng Motors chose the NVIDIA DRIVE series chips and developed operators in software development, but Huawei developed its own chips, and only Huawei in China has achieved mass production and use network algorithmsIn terms of computing power, Huawei's current computing power invested in autonomous driving training is 1800p, which is three times that of Xpeng Motors' 600p.
Before the rise of the "Huawei series", consumers who wanted to have a better experience in intelligence often chose Xpeng MotorsBut after the rise of the "Huawei system", consumers have a new choice. From the perspective of sales comparison, Huawei's Wenjie M7 sales reached 17,039 units in November, which is the highest selling model in the same classThe sales volume of the Xpeng G6, which is the benchmark for the M7, is 8,750 units, although this sales volume is not low, but it is only about half of the sales of the M7.
On December 18, Xiaopeng Motors officially released a price reduction news, saying that in December, Xiaopeng G6 was reduced by 10,000 yuan for a limited time, and the starting price dropped to 19990,000 yuan. Compared with the "Huawei series", sales continue to rise without price reduction, and it is clear that Xpeng Motors is falling behind in the competition with Huawei.
From the current point of view, Alibaba's ** is more like a signal, which reflects the difficult situation of Xiaopeng Motors itself. In the face of increasingly fierce competition in the new energy vehicle track, coupled with the "Huawei system" that has very strong competitiveness in intelligence, what hole cards does Xiaopeng Motors have in the future?