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Text丨Gu Xiaobai Editor丨Du Hai

Source: Zhengjingshe (ID: zhengjingshe)

(This article is about 2,600 words)

Observation No. 14 of Zhengjingshe's &quot Automobile Elimination Competition&quot

As we all know, the domestic new energy vehicle industry is facing serious internal competition, and the price war among automakers is becoming increasingly fierce. Against this background, the industry has entered a period of accelerated reshuffle, and the operating conditions of various automakers have increasingly attracted market attention.

Previously, people always discussed the early new car-making forces Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal together, calling them "Wei, Xiaopeng, and Li Auto";Among these three giants, Xiaopeng seems to have fallen behind, and has been replaced by "Liwenwei".

Zhengjingshe analysts noted that Xpeng's sales target for the whole year of 2024 was 280,000 vehicles, and its actual sales in the first six months were 52,028 vehicles. In other words, half of the time has passed, and Xpeng has only achieved 18.6% of its sales target, less than 20% of the target.

Judging from the financial report, Xiaopeng has still not escaped from the quagmire of losses. Coupled with the frequent consumer rights protection storms, it seems that it has fallen into continuous difficulties.

1

The completion rate is less than 20%

At the beginning of this year, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xpeng Motors, wrote in his New Year's letter: This year is the first year that Chinese auto brands have entered a "bloody sea" of competition. He hopes to build Xpeng Motors into a versatile company with no shortcomings in the new year, reversing its previous status of "falling behind".

However, judging from Xiaopeng's sales in the past year, Xiaopeng's sales have shown a significant decline since 2024.

Data shows that in the three months from October to December 2023, Xpeng's monthly sales exceeded 20,000 vehicles; in 2024, monthly sales fell sharply, especially in February, when they fell below 5,000 vehicles; it was not until the past two months that they returned to the level of over 10,000, but it is still far from the second half of 2023.

From a horizontal comparison at the level of industry competition, in the first half of this year, car companies including Wenjie, Zeekr, and Leapmotor all had sales far ahead of Xiaopeng. Even Nezha Auto, which has encountered development difficulties, has surpassed Xiaopeng in sales.

In terms of target completion, Xiaopeng has set itself a sales target of 280,000 vehicles in 2024. However, in the first six months, the actual sales volume was 52,028 vehicles, and the target completion rate was 18.6%.

In terms of industry competition, the sales completion rate of most new energy vehicles in the first half of the year exceeded 30%, such as Leapmotor, Zeekr, etc. Geely and BYD have exceeded 40%, but Xpeng is less than 20%, lagging behind significantly among all the car companies.

Why does Xpeng's sales show such signs of weakness in 2024?

First of all, the new product x9 did not meet expectations.

On January 1, 2024, Xiaopeng officially launched the Xiaopeng X9, positioning it as a pure electric intelligent large seven-seater MPV; in the six months since its launch this year, the cumulative sales of Xiaopeng X9 have reached 13,143 units.

However, after the monthly sales reached 3,946 units in March this year, the sales of Xpeng X9 began to decline. According to the China Passenger Car Joint Data, the sales of Xpeng X9 in June 2024 were 1,687 units, accounting for 15.81% of Xpeng Motors' sales and ranking 17th in MPV sales.

(Image data source: Autohome)

Secondly, other products are not competitive enough.

In addition to the Xiaopeng X9, Xiaopeng Motors currently has 5 models on sale, all of which are pure electric models, including Xiaopeng P5, Xiaopeng P7, Xiaopeng G3, Xiaopeng G6, and Xiaopeng G9. The product matrix is ​​relatively complete.

Among them, the previous sales main models Xiaopeng P7, Xiaopeng G9 and Xiaopeng G6 have performed poorly in the market this year; in addition, the sales of two less popular models, Xiaopeng P5 and Xiaopeng G3, were dismal in the first half of the year.

Data shows that in June 2024, the sales volume of Xiaopeng P5 was only 283 units, accounting for 2.65% of Xiaopeng Motors' sales and ranking 59th in compact car sales; while the sales volume of Xiaopeng G3 in June was only 52 units, and the cumulative sales in 2024 were 302 units, ranking 116th in monthly sales among SUVs.

Zhengjingshe analysts noted that the market generally believes that the main reason for the poor sales of Xiaopeng Motors is that the selling points of its products are not prominent enough. For example, although it has deep technical accumulation in the field of intelligent driving, its competitiveness in this field has been significantly squeezed since Huawei joined the car manufacturing industry.

In general, although Xiaopeng currently has many models, there is no strong model to support it, and the reason behind this is the lack of competitiveness of its products.

2

Losses are still the main theme

In addition to poor sales, Xiaopeng's financial situation is not optimistic.

In terms of revenue,The financial report shows that in 2023, Xpeng Motors' annual revenue was 30.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.2%. Compared with previous years, the revenue growth rate has slowed significantly.

In the first quarter of this year, the company achieved total revenue of 6.55 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62.3% and a month-on-month decrease of 49.8%.

Among them, the revenue from automobile sales was 5.54 billion yuan, an increase of 57.8% from 3.51 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2023, and a decrease of 54.7% from 12.23 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Revenue from services and others was RMB 1.00 billion, an increase of 93.1% from RMB 520 million in the first quarter of 2023 and an increase of 22.1% from RMB 820 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In terms of net profit,Xpeng's profitability is even less optimistic. According to the financial report, from 2020 to 2023, the net losses will be 2.732 billion yuan, 4.837 billion yuan, 9.118 billion yuan, and 10.38 billion yuan respectively. In the first quarter of this year, Xpeng still did not get rid of the quagmire of losses, with a net loss of 1.35 billion yuan.

For car companies, gross profit margin is also one of the indicators that the market pays more attention to.

The financial report shows that Xpeng Motors' overall gross profit margin exceeded 10% in 2021 and 2022. Then in 2023, the gross profit margin dropped sharply to only 1.47%. The gross profit margin increased in the first quarter of this year, but it was only 3.22%.

In terms of industry comparison,Using the full-year data for 2023, the gap between Xpeng and NIO and Ideal is still large. In 2023, NIO's gross profit margin was 5.5%, while Ideal's gross profit margin was 22.2%.

In terms of funding,The financial report shows that as of the end of March 2024, Xpeng Motors' cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investments and time deposits were 41.4 billion yuan; at the end of December 2023, the figure was 45.7 billion yuan, indicating a month-on-month decrease.

Analysts from Zhengjingshe believe that continued investment in research and development, marketing expenses, product line expansion, etc. are still needed. Not only is Xiaopeng still some distance away from stopping the bleeding, but its capital chain still needs to continue to be under pressure.

In the first quarter earnings call of Xpeng Motors, He Xiaopeng declared: "Xpeng Motors' strategy will not be just focused on sales growth as before. In such a competitive market, we will focus more on pursuing high quality and high efficiency, comprehensively improving the company's comprehensive capabilities, making the strengths even stronger and eliminating the weaknesses."

However, it now seems that Xiaopeng's dilemma of low gross profit margin remains. Various expenses continue to devour profits, ultimately causing the company to fall into long-term losses. Now that sales pressure is increasing, this dilemma is unlikely to improve.

3

Consumer complaints continue

At the product level, Xiaopeng Motors has recently been constantly complained by consumers for incidents such as spontaneous combustion, brake failure more than two years after purchase, sales of defective vehicles, seat leather covers that are getting worse and worse, battery life disputes, non-refund of user deposits, and failure of Sentry Mode.

For example, during the 315 event this year, Beijing News Shell Finance reported that Xiaopeng Motors' battery life performance did not match its actual publicity, and users questioned its "false labeling." This issue has attracted widespread attention and discussion.

In addition, Xiaopeng is also suspected of breach of contract in delivery and failure to refund user deposits, which has caused discussion among consumers.

According to the Beijing News Shell Finance, Mr. Liu recently paid a deposit at Xiaopeng Yichang Development Avenue 4S store, but encountered problems such as the display car could not be delivered and the price of the new car changed. He had to ask for a refund but was rejected. After several complaints failed, Mr. Liu climbed onto the roof of the Xiaopeng 4S store on July 10 to defend his rights.

After several rights protection efforts, Mr. Liu went to the local High-tech Zone Market Supervision Bureau, and the relevant person in charge of the bureau went to the 4S store with him for mediation. Under mediation, the 4S store promised to return the deposit, but required Mr. Liu to compensate him 5,000 yuan for the damage to the vehicle caused by climbing onto the exhibition car.

In addition, some consumers have previously reported that when the vehicle was scratched, Xiaopeng Motors' Sentry Mode failed to give timely reminders, and it was suspected that it failed when it was turned on. This problem involves the performance of its intelligent technology.

Xiaopeng Motors claims that this function is mainly based on the intensity of vibration. If there is a large external vibration interference, a reminder will be triggered. On the contrary, if there is a slight touch and the vibration is small, no reminder will be triggered. The vibration alarm is a monitoring auxiliary function, which is mainly for users to detect abnormal situations in advance in some scenarios. However, there are also some weak scenarios that are difficult to overcome, so it cannot be guaranteed that reminders can be triggered in any scenario. The company will continue to optimize and improve the function.

Data shows that Xiaopeng Motors Sales Co., Ltd. has disclosed 17 complaints in the past month, up 21.43% from the previous month, and the mediation success rate in the past month is 47.06%. On the Black Cat complaint platform, the number of complaints against Xiaopeng Motors has reached more than 1,600.

Obviously, multiple complaints and rights protection incidents not only affected Xiaopeng's brand image and consumer trust, but also posed challenges to its future market development.

As consumers have higher and higher requirements for the endurance, safety, and services of new energy vehicles,Xiaopeng Motors, whose sales volume has lagged behind significantly, has been operating at a loss for a long time, has received constant complaints from consumers, and has seen its market value evaporate significantly:

Will it be a strong reversal, or will it be gradually marginalized or even disappear like other car companies such as WM Motor and HiPhi?

How much time can the automobile market and capital market give?

Welcome to leave a message in the comment area and tell us your opinion. [Produced by Zhengjingshe]

Editor-in-charge | Tang Weiping · Editor | Du Hai · Bai Jin · Editorial | An An · Proofreading | Ran Ran

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