Xpeng Motors (09868.)HK) has been a bit "difficult" recently, so I want to make it difficult for dealers.
According to "Phoenix News" on March 6, "Late Auto" learned from multiple independent sources that Xpeng Motors has recently begun to require dealers to reserve inventory. A number of dealers said that they would purchase half of the target sales volume from Xpeng every month. This process is generally seen in traditional car manufacturers, who will require 4S store dealers to purchase vehicles first, reserve a certain amount of inventory, and then sell them. Under this model, automakers are equivalent to directly wholesale vehicles to dealers, quickly recoup funds, and dealers bear the risk of capital and inventory. Generally speaking, car companies will set a "monthly task" for dealers, that is, sales targets for each month, and "press the inventory" to dealers accordingly. As a new force in car manufacturing, Xpeng has not taken similar actions before.
According to public information, Xiaopeng adopted a direct sales model at the beginning of its establishment, and began to open up the dealer franchise model in 2019, but produced on demand and did not require dealers to bear inventory costs. According to people familiar with the matter, since December last year, Xpeng began to ask dealers to purchase vehicles from Xiaopeng and reserve inventory. In the same month, Xpeng sold 20,115 vehicles, achieving its monthly sales target. In February this year, Xpeng held a dealer investor conference. A dealer at the meeting told "Late Auto" that Wang Fengying, president of Xpeng, once again emphasized at the meeting: dealers should reserve inventory. She said that in the past, some dealers sold multiple brands of cars at the same time, and other brands had inventory, and if Xpeng didn't put some inventory pressure on dealers, they might not go all out to sell Xpeng.
In fact, Xpeng's sales have indeed been a bit dismal this year. In the January delivery list, Xpeng Motors achieved sales of 8,250 vehicles, down 59% month-on-month, and was the largest month-on-month decline among the new car-making forces. In February, Xpeng's sales continued to decline, with only 4,545 new cars delivered in February. As for the reason for the sales in February, He Xiaopeng attributed the reason to the production capacity of the new car X9. He said, "Due to too many orders and production capacity has not kept up, Xpeng has a backlog of tens of thousands of orders for X9 in January, and the current difficulties faced by X9 have been solved, and the Spring Festival will work overtime to quickly increase production capacity to ensure delivery." ”
In terms of profit, according to the financial report, as of the third quarter of last year, Xpeng Motors achieved a cumulative net profit of -902.8 billion, the company's overall gross profit margin is -27%, and the gross margin of the automotive business was -61%, it can be seen that Xiaopeng Motors is still in the situation of "selling one and losing one", and life still needs to be hard.