5,000 units were sold in China in three years
Written by Wang Lei
A chill from Northern Europe hits.
Polestar has just announced plans to lay off around 450 people worldwide, a small but 15% of its workforce.
As early as May last year, Polestar announced a hiring freeze and tightened jobs, and it seems that the situation is still not optimistic in the past six months.
As a high-end electric vehicle brand born out of the Volvo brand, it was born to benchmark Tesla, but it seems that it was born at the wrong time, and sales have not been able to rise. At its lowest, sales in China were only 40 units sold in a single month.
In June 2022, Polestar went public on the NASDAQ, and in less than two years, it has fallen from an issue price of $10 to a current price of $2Around $1,The market value has shrunk by nearly 80%.
How can this niche and maintain its own style brand avoid obsolescence?
It's all about reducing costs
The adjustment of the company's business plan and the optimization of the scale of business and operations are the universal response to layoffs.
In terms of external spending, we will make a series of cutbacks. An Polestar spokesperson said, "We had to make a very difficult decision to reduce the number of our employees. ”
The aim is to accelerate the improvement of Polestar's profit margins while reducing the company's total expenses in order to break even with cash flow by 2025.
It is worth noting that Polestar also had a layoff plan before, when Polestar specifically stated that it would not involve the Chinese market. In May 2023, Polestar announced a 10% layoff of its workforce, bringing the number to 300, and also froze the company's recruitment efforts.
Johanmalmqvist, Polestar's chief financial officer, claimed that the layoffs were based on the current macroeconomic environment and that the company was trying to control costs.
In addition to the layoffs, Polestar has also set its sales target for 2023 from the previous one80,000 units to 67,000 units。The official reason given is that the new model Polestar 3 cannot be delivered on time in the summer of 2023 and needs to be postponed to the first quarter of 2024.
However, even so, Polestar has not been able to meet its lowered target, with full-year sales of only 5.5 in 2023460,000 units, still lower than the previous minimum figure of 60,000 units.
Sales in the fourth quarter of 2023 were only 1,280 units, a year-on-year decline of 8%, which also means that Polestar's full-year sales momentum is not too strong, and even began to gradually weaken.
Only 8 months have passed, and the second major layoff has come, and the number of layoffs in two waves has been reached750 people
On top of that, just 10 days ago, Polestar was sold by Swedish banking boss Skandin**iska Enskilda Banken (SEB)."Extremely bearish", readjusted the valuation of PolestarDirectly down to "0" kroner
This means that, in the eyes of the Nordic bank boss, Polestar".Worthless
According to Nordea's assessment, it said".It's impossible not to see any value in Polestar”。Polestar had pledged to make a profit in 2025 if it received a capital injection of 14 billion kroner (9.5 billion yuan). But Nordic Bank believes that it will beCompletely impossible to achieve
SEB Bank was Volvo's main advisor at the time of its IPO and one of the largest financial groups in the Nordics. According to its analysts, "Polestar has become a drag." ”
Sell 5,000 units in China in three years
Many people may be unfamiliar with the Polestar brand, which was originally founded in 1996 by the Swedish car brand Polestar.
In 2005, it became Volvo's leading supplier of performance models. In 2009, Volvo added Polestar to its racing and performance car R&D division, and in 2015 Volvo acquired Polestar, which became Volvo's electrified performance R&D division.
Until Volvo was wholly acquired by Geely, in October 2017, Volvo and Geely jointly announced the formation of a high-end electric vehicle joint venture brand, which is now Polestar.
In June 2022, Polestar announced the completion of the business combination with the help of special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Gores Guggenheim, and officially listed on the NASDAQ, with a market value of $27.6 billion on the first day of listing, once surpassing traditional car companies such as Nissan and Renault.
However, backed by the two big trees of Volvo and Geely, Polestar debuted at the peak, and then its performance declined all the way.
According to the latest data released by Polestar, Polestar's total revenue for the first quarter of 2023 is 5$500 million, less than the market expectation of 5$700 million, with a net loss of $9 millionOverseas revenue accounted for 986%, while the Chinese market accounts for only 14%。
In the second quarter, Polestar posted revenue of 6$8.5 billion, which is also very dependent on the UK and Swedish markets, while the US and China saw a decline in revenue, and a net loss of 30.4 billion US dollars, up from 2$2.8 billion.
By the third quarter, the operating loss also reached 2$6.1 billion, up from $1.1 billion in the same period in 2022$9.6 billion, an increase of 33 per cent.
In the first three quarters of 2023, Polestar's gross profit margin was onlyPersistent losses and extremely low gross margins, had to let its two ** East Volvo and Geely continue to transfuse.
At the end of 2022, Volvo and PSD Investment, Polestar's two major shareholders, gave Polestar an emergency blood transfusion$1.6 billionIt should be noted that PSD Investment is Li Shufu's private investment company.
In October, Polestar filed another document with the SEC asking for permission to raise $1 billion.
Moreover, Polestar, which has "Chinese roots", has lagged behind in the domestic market compared to the performance of foreign markets. There are almost no specific sales results in China, and we can still find some clues.
In 2021, Polestar sold 2,048 new cars in China, accounting for only 7% of global sales. In 2022, Polestar's corresponding compulsory traffic insurance data is only 1,717 vehicles. As for sales in 2023, according to data from third-party platforms,Sales for the year were only 1,100 units, down 34% year-on-year.
In the three years since the first Polestar model was delivered, Polestar has sold only about 5,000 units in the Chinese market, and today Polestar is gradually being marginalized by the market.
5 CEOs in 6 years
Polestar's continued sluggish sales in China have a certain relationship with the frequent change of managers in ChinaIn the six years since its founding, Polestar has changed five CEOs in China
In 2016, Volvo and Geely established their own Polestar brands, and Shen Feng, then president of Volvo Cars China R&D, became Polestar's global CTO and Polestar China's CEO, but left shortly after.
In December 2017, NIO announced that Shen Feng, former global CTO and CEO of Polestar China, had joined NIO as Vice President of Quality and Chairman of the Quality Management Committee, responsible for its overall quality-related management, reporting directly to Li Bin.
In March 2018, Polestar announced new appointments, with Zhenhao Wu, former Vice President of Product for Volvo Car Group Asia Pacific, as President of Polestar China. However, after a year he returned to Volvo.
In March 2020, Polestar announced that Wu Zhenhao was transferred to Volvo Cars Asia Pacific to be responsible for strategy and business coordination, and Gao Hong, former senior director of Volkswagen China, was appointed president of Polestar China.
A year later, in March 2021, Polestar appointed Nathan Forshaw as President of Polestar China and Asia Pacific, with overall responsibility for Polestar's China and Asia Pacific operations, reporting to Polestar CEO Thomas Inglatt.
In August last year, Feng Dan, who was Cadillac's national sales director and head of the business unit, took over the hot potato of Polestar China.
As a result of frequent turmoil at the top, it isThe product positioning has fluctuated and the strategic center of gravity has repeatedly jumped between the European, American and Chinese markets
At the end of 2021, Thomas Ingrat directly stated that "the Polestar brand will continue to focus on Europe and North America, and by the middle of this century, the sales share in Europe will reach 40%, and the rest of the sales share will be divided equally between North America and Asia." ”
Last year, at the signing ceremony of the strategic cooperation between Polestar and Meizu, Geely Chairman Li Shufu personally attended and delivered a speech. At that time, Shen Ziyu also said, "We want to localize Polestar as soon as possible, and promote the development of Polestar products with the advantages of intelligent software in China."
For Polestar, the partnership with Meizu also means:Realigning the strategic focus back to the Chinese market
However, Polestar, which has returned to the center of gravity of the domestic market, has a great idea of being contrary to the Chinese market.
Polestar seems to have chosen to ignore the domestic new energy vehicle sector, said Polestar CEO Thomas IngrathThere is no consideration for increasing sales through price reductions and **This also means that the brand will still maintain its high-end positioning route.
In the case of such involution, the market will not give many opportunities to niche brands. In the new energy era, the joint venture brand has no past filter, and only when product development and sales operations keep up with the rhythm of the industry can it stand last.
Otherwise, you can only lose the world's largest car market and pay for your own coldness.