Yifan from the Vice-Pilot Temple.The president of Leap is unemployed.Smart Car Reference | ai4auto
Leap, which has a market value of more than HK$30 billion, has delivered about a total last year14.40,000 units, a year-on-year surge of more than 29%, sales ranked third among the new forces.
It has also been approved by Citroen's parent company for 11.5 billion yuan of shares, and the car is applauded and seated.
A week after the good news was announced, the co-founder and president of LeaprunWu Baojun, but lost their annual salary43.82 million yuanwork.
He compared himself to Yang Xiu Hanxin on Weibo, shouting "rabbit dead dog cooking".
Co-founder and President of LeaprunWu BaojunThe news of the resignation was first reported by Jiemian News**, and said that Leap would no longer set up the position of president.
Later, an insider revealed that Wu Baojun had not participated in the operation of Leap for a year, but was only responsible for strategy and other affairs.
The next day, Leapmotor issued a statement confirming the news of Wu Baojun's resignation, which was explained by the following"The labor contract is terminated, and the company will not renew the employment".
However, the statement did not mention whether there will be a president in the future.
However, Leap's statement also confirmed that Wu Baojun was only responsible for the past yearStrategic developmentwithPublic Affairsrelated work. And not when Wu arrived in 2020, he was entrustedMarketing, Manufacturing, Business Development & **Chain Managementand other important tasks.
The statement also pointed out that after leaving office, Wu Baojun will be responsible for the affairs of the vice presidentLi TengfeiTake over. There is not much public information about Li Tengfei, who was previously the general manager of the finance department of Leapmotor.
At the end of the statement, Leapmotor attributed its development to the overall industry environment and the support of every car owner, Leapmotor employee and partner.
Source: Leapmotor official website In 2023, Leapmotor has not encountered major operating difficulties, and it can even be said that it has performed well. The core person's contract will not be renewed when it expires, and the resignation statement does not resemble "thank him for his contributions".
It's quite unusual. Regarding Wu Baojun's departure, there are different opinions. Some people believe that it is because Leapmotor's performance last year was less than expected, and its sales did not meet the target.
Leapmotor will deliver more than 14 in 202340,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 29%, but it is indeed much less than the sales target of 20 units.
But the problem is that many new forces have not reached their sales targets in 2023, and they have not had the departure of core executives.
And among the new forces, Leap's performance in 2023 is not bad.
First of allSales performance, Leapmotor's annual delivery volume ranks third among the new forces, second only to Li and Xpeng.
SecondlyGross marginIn the third quarter of 2023, it will turn positive, and the target will be completed one quarter ahead of schedule.
At the end of November, Stellantis, the parent company of Citroen, invested 11.5 billion yuan, and the two sides clearly established a joint venture company, Leaprun International.
Leapmotor provides technology, and Stellantis provides overseas production capacity and channels, creating a new model for Chinese cars to go overseas.
On the left is Stellantis CEO Tang Weishi, and on the right is Zhu Jiangming, so because of the performance problems in 2023, the president has been optimized, which is not quite reasonable.
Some people also analyzed, and Wu Baojun is notZhu JiangmingThe factors of the Dahua lineage.
Dahua shares is the last entrepreneurial project of Zhu Jiangming, the founder and chairman of Leapmotor, and Zhu Jiangming was the vice chairman of Dahua.
According to the official website of Leapmotor, Leapmotor has a total of five senior vice presidents. among othersCao Li(in the image below) andZhou Hongtao(right, pictured below) were Zhu Jiangming's old department in Dahua. Especially the latter, who joined Dahua in 2001 and followed Zhu Jiangming for more than 20 years.
concurrently serving as the secretary of the board of directorsJinghua(first from left), previously worked in Zhejiang Huashu, a partner of Dahua Co., Ltd., and Jinghua himself is an alumnus of Zhu Jiangming Zhejiang University.
These three all joined Leap in February 2016, which is considered an entrepreneurial team, much earlier than Wu Baojun, who joined in May 2020.
The other two came later than Wu Baojun.
Jun Xu joined Leapmotor in July 2022 and joined Motorola in 2010China Channel DirectorAt that time, Zhu Jiangming also worked at Motorola. However, Zhu soon returned to Dahua that year.
Zhang Weili joined in September 2022, and he is about the same as Xu Jun, and the two used to beHuawei terminals's colleagues, Mr. Yu's old subordinates. Later, in January 2023, he was also appointed Senior Vice President.
Therefore, the current executives of Leapmotor are not all Zhu's descendants, but they did not have much experience in the automotive industry before joining Leaprun.
Regarding Wu's "unemployment", Zero Run issued a statement, and the outside world continued to speculate, how did he respond?
Wu Baojun responded on Weibo, but deleted it again less than a day later:
The Weibo was deleted at noon on January 26, and Wu Baojun said that he was no longer the president, but he was still a director of the company and held shares. listed the achievements of Leapmotor, which he "single-handedly participated in", in the past three years:
Sales soared, IPO was successful, and Stellantis, the world's fourth-largest car company in terms of sales, established a partnership.
He also said that he was negotiating with the company to deal with the equity, and thanked his colleagues for blessing the company.
In fact, before responding to the unemployment, Wu Baojun hinted on Weibo that he might leave. His Weibo updates are not frequent, but he posted seven Weibo posts in a row on December 16 last year, thinking that it was in solidarity with Dong Yuhui on the cusp.
At that time, Dong Yuhui of Dongfang Selection was backstabbed, and the former CEO Sun Dongxu mishandled the incident, causing Dongfang Selection's stock price to plummet and losing a large number of fans in the live broadcast room, and Dongfang Selection was accused of underestimating Dong Yuhui's importance to him. Wu Baojun said"Empathize".
Then, in the afternoon of the same day, he also posted a rather dramatic Weibo (now also deleted):
Wu Baojun was nostalgic for the past and the present, compared himself to Yang Xiu Han Xin, saying that "the co-founder of the Han Dynasty", the founding hero Han Xin followed Liu Bang to make great contributions, but it still didn't end well. Emotion:"Rabbits die and dogs cook, history is inevitable".
Zero run Han Xin", who is Wu Baojun, who dares to compare himself like this?
Wu Baojun was born in a professional class, and he is also an automobile veteran with 30 years of experience, and is responsible for marketing all year round.
In 1993, Wu Baojun graduated from Jilin University of Technology with a major in automobile and tractor, and joined Guangzhou Peugeot to be responsible for sales in Northeast China.
Five years later, he switched to Guangqi Honda and was promoted to the head of the management department of the sales department. In 2004, he left Honda to study for a one-year MBA in Australia.
After receiving his degree, Wu Baojun joined GAC Toyota in 2005 as the director of sales and later the director of planning and marketing until 2012.
After that, Wu Baojun joined Zhongcheng Auto Insurance Co., Ltd. as vice president, and later promoted to president and chairman.
Therefore, Wu Baojun has been active in Guangzhou for more than 20 years, and has accumulated rich marketing experience in well-known car companies.
Later, he will join Leap, which is headquartered in Hangzhou, and Wu Baojun once revealed that the reason is that he and Zhu Jiangming have mutual friends.
Wu Baojun's experience and ability were also needed by Leap at that time.
After being recommended by a friend, Zhu Jiangming was in the picture, and Wu Baojun also recognized the technical background and culture of Leaprun, which led to coming to Leaprun in May 2020.
Leaprun has given its co-founder and president authority to be responsible for key businesses such as marketing, manufacturing, chain and business development.
At that time, Leap had not yet been IPO, and its monthly sales had been hovering in triple digits for a long time, and the C11 and C01 that everyone is familiar with now had not been released.
Therefore, Wu Baojun said that he mainly did three things when he went to Zero:
Elevate your marketing capabilities.
Financing. Solve the production qualification.
When Wu Baojun joined, it coincided with the launch of Leap T03, which was also a small car with a price of 658-7.580,000 yuan, with a range of 400km.
Wu Baojun believes that it has the potential to go in volume, and Leapmotor has selected some cities with better development of small cars, focusing on marketing, and successfully making the monthly sales exceed 3,000 units.
Also in 2020, Leaprun purchased the production qualification transferred by Xinfuda and solved a major problem.
Then there is the problem of funds, "Old Man Le" is not a long-term solution after all, and Leap opened pre-sales of the third car, SUV, in February 2021Leap C11Wu Baojun revealed that the policy of "20,000 deposits to deduct 40,000" was launched during the pre-sale, and 20,000 orders were harvested until October delivery.
This deposit solves part of the company's funding problem.
But it's not enough. Wu Baojun revealed that Zhu Jiangming's founding team realized at that time that hundreds of millions and billions of cars were not enough, and an IPO must be carried out. He speculated that Zhu Jiangming "fancied" him not only because of his sales ability in traditional car companies, but also because of his ability to do financing in Zhongcheng Insurance.
Since 2021, the pace of financing has indeed accelerated, and in January of that year, it opened Series B financing, raising 4.3 billion yuan, and later in July 2021, Leapmotor raised another 4.5 billion yuan.
Wu Baojun said that at that time, Leap had already met the conditions for an IPO, and after consideration, it chose to land on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and submit an application in January 2022.
On the eve of listing, Leapmotor conducted another pre-IPO round of financing in September 2022 and raised another 30.8 billion US dollars (equivalent to about 21 yuan at that time.)300 million yuan). In the end, Leaprun successfully IPO.
Wu Baojun said that Leap has the conditions for an IPO, which is "the third written agreement with Mr. Zhu". As for what the written agreement is, Wu Baojun did not disclose.
Finally, to sum up, the "old car man" Wu Baojun has been in the three years and eight months of Leaprun, and together with Zhu Jiangming's team, he has successively launched cost-effective models such as Leapmotor C11 and C01.
After increasing sales and attracting multiple rounds of financing, it successfully IPO in 2022.
In 2023, the gross profit margin will turn positive, attracting 11.5 billion shares from Stellantis, and the annual sales volume will win the third place among new forces.
Wu Baojun believes that this is "the three major goals of reaching an employment agreement beyond expectations", and Leap did not renew the employment in the end, and the co-founder and president lost their jobs overnight, and the Weibo shouting was quickly deleted.
The matter is not over here, Leapmotor's 2023 interim report shows that Wu Baojun holds 116% shares, how to deal with the equity is still being negotiated by the two parties.
And although Wu Baojun lamented that "the rabbit dies and the dog cooks" and "the bird hides the bow", in today's fiercely competitive Chinese auto market, Leap is not the time when "the rabbit dies and the bird is gone".