Introduction:It is worth affirming that Li Shufu has successfully brought Geely Automobile out of the trough of the past few years, and we will wait and see what height it will reach in the future.
Road Words |Author Stone Business Review |Produced
Judging an entrepreneur, in addition to his performance when the enterprise is going well, it is very important to look at his ability to do so after the enterprise is in trouble.
2018 is Li Shufu's highlight moment. In that year, Geely Automobile Group, which led him, achieved annual sales of 1.5 million vehicles, ranking first among China's independent car companies. But in the years that followed, Geely's performance gradually fell into a slump. For example, from 2019 to 2022, Geely Automobile's annual sales were only 136160,000, 132020,000, 13280,000 with 14330,000 units, sales have been stagnant. At the same time, in the Chinese auto market, on the one hand, there is the rapid rise of new car-making forces such as Wei Xiaoli, and there are also old rivals such as BYD, which have taken away the position of Geely Automobile's independent car company sales champion.
Analyzing the reasons for backwardness, this is not unrelated to Geely Automobile's slow turn in the era of new energy vehicles. However, after realizing his own problems, Li Shufu showed the calmness of an excellent entrepreneur, and his leadership Geely Automobile quickly made adjustments, and finally in 2023, the sales volume will reach 168650,000 units, surpassing the highlight of 2018.
Entering 2024, Geely Automobile's performance is even more eye-catching. In January, when sales in the entire industry were relatively sluggish, Geely Automobile's sales bucked the trend**, with sales reaching 213487 units, a year-on-year increase of 110%, a record high. And to the surprise of the whole industry, this sales volume surpassed the industry leader BYD in January.
Dismantling Geely Automobile's sales structure, we can get a glimpse of the key elements that support Geely Automobile**.
First of all, Geely Automobile's performance in the field of new energy has been excellent, with sales reaching 65,826 units, a year-on-year increase of 591%. Among them, the Geely Galaxy series sold 19,223 units, the Geometry series sold 20,722 units, the Lynk & Co brand sold 12,596 units, and the Zeekr brand sold 12,537 units.
Secondly, the performance of Geely Automobile's multi-brand has been greatly improved. Among them, the main brand Geely sold 172774 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of more than 98%. The sales volume of the Lynk & Co brand was 28,176 units, a year-on-year increase of about 155%. Because the ZEEKR brand is completely focused on pure electric models, its 12,537 new energy vehicle sales are also the overall sales of the brand.
In addition, in terms of overseas exports, Geely Automobile also has a commendable performance. Among them, 26,262 vehicles were exported in January, a year-on-year increase of 79% and a month-on-month increase of more than 29%.
In February, due to the fact that the Spring Festival holiday has fewer days than other months, it is often the lowest point of monthly sales of new energy vehicle manufacturers. However, Geely Automobile still maintained its strong performance in the month, with monthly sales of 11140,000 units, second only to BYD's 12 among independent car companies170,000 units.
From the above data, we can see the results of Geely Automobile's most critical actions.
The first is that Geely Automobile has focused on the pure electric market to create the ZEEKR brand.
At present, in China's new energy vehicle market, plug-in hybrid and range extension technology routes are favored by consumers, while new energy brands focusing on pure electric models are quite difficult. This is also an important reason why NIO and Xpeng are gradually lagging behind the ideal and questioning world, which also makes many new energy vehicle manufacturers give up the strategic choice of focusing on pure electric models and transform into a range extension route.
In this context, the ZEEKR brand has been quite tenacious, and it has successively launched four models, including ZEEKR 001, ZEEKR X, ZEEKR 009 and ZEEKR 007, and has gradually become one of the most representative pure electric vehicle brands in addition to Tesla, and its market performance is on a par with the new car-making forces NIO and Xiaopeng. With the solution of some user pain points such as charging, battery life and cost, pure electric models still have great growth prospects in the long run.
The second is that Geely Automobile has implemented a decisive strategic adjustment to its mid-to-high-end brand Lynk & Co, gradually focusing on new energy models with plug-in hybrid technology, allowing it to realize the brand rebirth.
According to public data, the sales volume of the Lynk & Co brand from 2019 to 2021 were 128066, 175456 and 220516 respectively, and they have maintained a relatively good growth trend, but after entering 2022, they began to turn around and plummet, and fell back to 180127. This achievement is quite bad in the context of the rapid development momentum of China's own car brands as a whole.
After strategic adjustments, the Lynk & Co brand has successively launched a number of new energy models equipped with plug-in hybrid technology, such as the Lynk & Co 09, Lynk & Co 08 and Lynk & Co 06, in 2023, and the sales volume has been rapid**, eventually reaching 220,250 units, close to the highest level in 2021. According to the data of December 2023, the sales volume of new energy vehicles under the Lynk & Co brand is 14,203 units, accounting for 55% of the overall monthly sales of 25,695 units3%。With the further new energy of products in the future, the Lynk & Co brand still has considerable room for growth.
The third is that Geely has successfully created the Galaxy new energy series under the main brand, changing the low-end image of Geely brand models in the minds of users in the past.
The Galaxy series was only officially launched in February 2023, and the first car delivery was in April. But in just 7 months, the Galaxy series has achieved annual sales of 83,497 units in 2023 through the L7 and L8. In January 2024, Galaxy launched a new medium and large sedan model, the E8, which pushed the overall monthly sales to further climb to 19,223 units, and also allowed Geely Galaxy to achieve the fastest speed record from 0 to delivery of 100,000 units in only 8 months.
It is also worth mentioning that the average selling price of Geely Galaxy bicycles exceeded 160,000 yuan, which is much higher than the average selling price of all cars under the Geely brand. In the future, with the further completion of product lines in various fields such as "pure electric + electric hybrid, sedan + SUV", the Geely Galaxy series is not only expected to achieve further breakthroughs, but also become an important support for the upward development of the Geely brand.
In the long-term research process of corporate strategy, Stone Business Review found that there are two main dimensions that determine the success of corporate strategy, one is strategic direction and the other is strategic execution. Among them, the most critical element that determines the implementation of corporate strategy is the core competence of the enterprise.
Whether it is the Zeekr brand, the Lynk & Co brand or the Geely brand's Galaxy series, the core root of its success is their strong product strength in the fields of design, performance, technology and quality. Especially in terms of exterior design, Geely Automobile's various brands have seen significant improvements. If it weren't for the strong product strength shown in all dimensions, no matter how correct the strategy would be in the current new energy vehicle industry, which is fighting with the gods, it would be useless.
Behind the product strength is Geely Automobile's strong technical capabilities, organizational capabilities and management capabilities. In a dangerous competitive environment, it successfully won a turnaround battle and grabbed a part of the market share from the powerful BYD.
However, the short-term victory does not make Geely take it lightly. There are also some illusions behind Geely's sales figures in the first two months of 2024 that are on par with BYD Auto. This is because BYD took March as the time point for a full upgrade of its products, and tactically gave up the sales performance in January and February.
Entering March, BYD has completed the update of the glory version of all models of its Dynasty Network and Ocean Network, not only the products have been greatly upgraded, but also the price of all products has been significantly reduced unexpectedly by the whole industry, which can be seen that BYD regards 2024 as a key year to further consolidate its leading position. Not surprisingly, BYD will achieve a significant increase in sales in March, and once again widen the gap with Geely Automobile in terms of sales.
In addition, through the layout of the three new brands of Denza, Equation Leopard and Yangwang in the mid-to-high-end, high-end and ultra-high-end markets, BYD has opened up a high-end layout that all other independent brands have not been able to complete. The success of these new brands, on the one hand, will help BYD to increase its new growth in the blue ocean market, and on the other hand, it will also feed back the reputation of BYD's main brand and further enhance BYD's share in the mid-range and low-end markets.
However, it is still worth affirming that Li Shufu has successfully brought Geely Automobile out of the trough of the past few years, and we will wait and see what kind of height it will reach in the future.
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