Recently, Hexun Auto learned from NIO that the company officially released its fourth quarter and full-year financial reports for 2020. Data shows that NIO Auto's revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020 was RMB 6.64 billion, a month-on-month increase of 46.7%, and 's total annual revenue was RMB 16.2579 billion, a year-on-year increase of 107.8%.
Compared with Tesla , which has just released its financial report and is also an Internet car manufacturer. What are the commonalities and differences between the two?
NIO : Gross profit turned positive but still lost
NIO 's revenue surge is closely related to its surge in sales. NIO Automobile announced that the number of delivery in the fourth quarter of 2020 was 17,353 vehicles. Among them are 4873 ES8s, 7574 ES6s and 4906 EC6s, and EC6 models sold more than ES8 and ES6 in December.
From the perspective of the whole year, NIO delivered a total of 43,728 vehicles in 2020, while in 2019 it was 20,565 vehicles. The annual sales volume successfully doubled year-on-year compared with NIO .
The rapid growth of overall revenue of NIO is mainly due to the continuous increase in the domestic penetration rate of new energy vehicles, coupled with the increase in the company's brand awareness and the increase in optional models, which has helped to significantly increase sales throughout the year.
On the gross profit side, NIO changed the situation of negative gross profit side in previous years. In 2020, it achieved a positive gross profit margin of 11.5%. In the fourth quarter, the sales and comprehensive gross profit margin of vehicle sales and comprehensive gross profit margin were 17.2%.
Although revenue has soared and gross profit has increased, looks like NIO has gotten rid of the embarrassing situation of "selling one car and losing one car", , but after careful consideration of this report card, it is not difficult to see that NIO cars still need to be worked hard, especially under the pressure of high R&D and high operation, NIO is still in a large loss state.
NIO R&D expenditure in the fourth quarter was 830 million yuan, a month-on-month increase of 40.4%, and annual R&D expenditure was 2.49 billion yuan. 's operating loss for the whole year was 4.61 billion yuan, a year-on-year narrowing of 58.4%.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that as the stock price hits new highs in the capital market, NIO has completely escaped the dilemma of shortage of money in 2019. As of December 31, 2020, NIO cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash funds and short-term investments totaled RMB 42.5 billion.
Tesla : Is it because of the first profit of the year that it relies on selling carbon?
is different from NIO . Tesla achieved the first profit of the company in 2020. However, the main contribution of this achievement is not from selling cars, but by selling "carbon".
Looking through the 2020 Tesla revenue project, we can find that the revenue of the "carbon emission credit line" is as high as US$1.58 billion (approximately RMB 10.228 billion), which is much higher than its net profit in 2020 of US$721 million. In other words, without this revenue, Tesla will change from its first profit in 2020 to continuing to lose money.
Tesla sold a total of 130,000 Model 3 units in China in 2020. Based on 250,000 yuan per unit, the annual revenue was only 32.5 billion yuan, and the revenue of "carbon emission credit" has reached one-third of the above-mentioned car sales.
So what exactly is this so-called "carbon emission credit limit"?
is similar to China's new energy vehicle points. Some states in the United States stipulate that OEMs must sell a certain proportion of new energy vehicles by 2025, including a certain number of electric, hybrid or other zero-carbon emission vehicles. If these automakers can't do this, they have to buy regulatory points from other OEMs with more points, such as Tesla , which only makes pure electric vehicles.
What’s even more terrifying is that this is a “zero cost-effective” transaction. Tesla can get environmental protection points that exceed the requirements every year, and car companies need it in a constant stream. Over the past five years, Tesla relies on this business to generate $3.3 billion in revenue for the company.
But Tesla also revealed that it does not expect to rely on selling points as the main source of cash flow, after all, this is not a "stable business".Judging from its financial report, the gross profit margin of Tesla in the automotive business was 24%, reaching US$5.4 billion. In addition, cash and equivalent reserves reached US$19.4 billion, a qualitative change from the situation where capital flows were exhausted two years ago.
"Price is not in line with each other". The two high-market car companies still have hidden dangers
2020 can be said to be a tense and exciting year, and the stock prices of new energy vehicle companies have skyrocketed like science fiction novels. For , NIO , it rose to $62.84 per share from less than $3 at the beginning of the year. Tesla is even more terrifying. The stock rose by as much as 743% throughout the year, with a market value exceeding US$800 billion, becoming the world's highest market value car company.
But in fact, the outbreak of the stock market does not completely represent the company's actual operating conditions, because the stock market has actually been disconnected from the company.
Although the market value of Tesla is the total share price of 12 automakers with 90% of the world's sales, Tesla only sold 500,000 cars in 2020, which is not even as much as the annual sales of the Toyota La Rolla model. Therefore, from the perspective of actual market share, Tesla cannot support such a high company market value.
and NIO Automobile also has the same problem. As a large car company with a market value of 80 billion US dollars, it is difficult to believe that selling cars is its main business, and it has even lost more than 5 billion yuan in recent years. Although there are continuous "blood transfusions" such as additional stocks and convertible bond issuance, their own "blood-making" ability has grown far less than that of stocks.
In addition to the above problems, these two high-market Internet car companies also have more urgent problems to be solved in the new year.
Although China has become an important market for Tesla , Tesla is making rapid progress in China, more and more problems have been exposed. In addition to the complained process, the recent several accidents in Tesla have not yet given satisfactory conclusions. Hit the mound of soil, green belts, isolation belts, and toilets. More than ten accidents broke out in China in more than half a year, and therefore it was interviewed by regulatory authorities.
and NIO has now been recognized by some consumers in terms of brand premium, and the high-end route of Chinese brands seems to have made a good start, NIO has paid too much for this path. Hexun Auto believes that NIO needs to continue to increase costs, maintain service levels, and use its strong product strength to consolidate this "luxury" attitude, or it also needs to learn from Tesla , and accelerate the optimization of cost control and efficiency issues through the continuous optimization of the industrial chain, and launch a large-scale model.
For the latter, Li Bin once expressed his attitude that he was interested in trying, but NIO brand itself will not launch such models, and may release new brands for production and sales in the future. There is currently no product release plan.
