's stock price hit a new high, and its total market value once exceeded ICBC (601398.SH)! Last night, lithium battery giant CATL announced the launch of an equity incentive plan at a high stock price.
Judging from this year's incentive plan, CATL launched a 45% off equity incentive during the high stock price period, involving nearly 4,500 employees, and gave a performance evaluation target of no less than 620 billion yuan from 2021 to 2024.
In fact, CATL has launched an incentive plan every year since its launch. As the stock price continues to rise in the past two years, the company's first batch of talents to receive incentives have made considerable returns.
However, after being "intercepted" by the American Lithium Industry's world-class lithium ore resources, how CATL can further ensure the supply of upstream raw materials to achieve the planned terminal product delivery capacity after expansion will be a key factor in the company's continued revenue growth.
"Ningwang" promotes 4.5% off large equity incentives
According to the announcement, the board of directors of CATL believes that the first grant conditions stipulated in the company's 2021 stock options and restricted stock incentive plan have been achieved. The first grant objects of this incentive plan include the company's middle-level managers and core backbone employees.
According to the authorization of the company's second extraordinary general meeting of shareholders in 2021, it agreed to determine that 1.89825 million stock options will be granted to 279 first-time incentive objects with the first authorization date and the first grant date, and the exercise price of is 612.08 yuan/share; 1.85024 million restricted shares will be granted to 4,208 first-time incentive objects with the first grant, with the grant price of 306.04 yuan/share.
It is worth mentioning that on the day of the launch of the equity incentive plan, CATL's stock price hit a record high, with a market value of 1.59 trillion yuan, surpassing the "cosmic bank" Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, becoming the second largest listed company in the market value of A shares , second only to Kweichow Moutai (600519.SH).
Wind data shows that as of the close of November 23, CATL's stock price has risen by 91.48% since 2021. Calculated based on the closing price of 681 yuan on the day of the launch of equity incentives, the grant price of some incentive targets is 45% off the closing price, and the exercise price of and is 90% off the closing price.
Since its listing on the GEM in June 2018, CATL has launched equity incentive plans every year. According to the financial report, from 2018 to 2020, CATL awarded restricted stocks to 1,628, 3,105, and 4,573 incentive targets respectively. Including this equity incentive, the equity incentive personnel since CATL went public have involved a total of 13,800 people, all of which are middle-level managers and core backbone employees of the company. As of 2020, CATL's total number of employees was 33,100.
Since November 2019, CATL has continued to rise for two years. Thanks to the high stock price increase, CATL's past rounds of incentive plans have benefited considerable income from employees. Taking the first incentive plan in 2018 as an example, at that time, CATL granted a total of 22.5804 million restricted shares to 1,628 incentive targets on August 30, 2018, with a grant price of 35.15 yuan, which was about 54% off the stock price at that time.
In the first three quarters of 2018-2021, CATL's operating income totaled nearly 200 billion yuan, far exceeding the fifth performance evaluation target for middle-level managers in the 2018 equity incentive, that is, the cumulative operating income value for the five years from 2018 to 2022 shall not be less than 130 billion yuan. In the four years since the launch of
, with the expansion of lithium battery production capacity and technological iteration, the global new energy vehicle industry has developed rapidly, and a large number of funds have poured into the lithium battery industry. As of the close of November 23, CATL's share price was 672 yuan, up more than 25 times from the issuance price of 25.14 yuan. According to this calculation, the first batch of incentives for CATL middle-level managers earned more than 10 million.
lithium mine was "intercepted". Is the revenue target of 620000 million yuan challenging?
Specifically for the performance goals of this incentive plan, according to the stock incentive plan, CATL's performance evaluation indicator is that the cumulative operating income value in the four years from 2021 to 2024 shall not be less than 620 billion yuan. In addition, revenue in 2021 will not be less than 105 billion yuan, and revenue from 2022 to 2024 will not be less than 135 billion yuan, 170 billion yuan and 210 billion yuan respectively.
According to this calculation, from 2022 to 2024, CATL's annual operating income growth rate must be higher than 28.57%, 26.93% and 23.53% respectively before the performance appraisal can be completed.
financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2021, CATL's operating income and net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies both increased by more than 130% year-on-year, reaching 73.361 billion yuan and 7.751 billion yuan respectively. In the fourth quarter, CATL needed to achieve at least 31.7 billion yuan in revenue to achieve the goal of this incentive plan.
As a core enterprise in the middle and lower reaches of the new energy vehicle industry chain, CATL's control over upstream raw material resources is one of the important factors in whether it can achieve a forward revenue target of 620 billion yuan.
Since the beginning of this year, the hot performance of the global new energy vehicle industry has not only reflected in the demand for the whole vehicle, but the upstream market of the lithium industry has become a must-fight for leading enterprises in all links of the industry. Just last week, the acquisition of Millennial Lithium, which attracted much attention from the global lithium industry and lasted for more than four months, came to an end. CATL, which has never hit a wall in the acquisition of industrial chain resources, was "intercepted".
On November 18, facing the higher bidding reported by the American Lithium Industry, CATL did not choose to further increase the price within the validity period of the agreement. Millennium Lithium Industry and America Lithium Industry signed a final agreement, which promised to pay US$20 million in compensation to CATL.
What you should see is that the initial plan to acquire Millennium Lithium was another A-share lithium battery giant Ganfeng Lithium (002460.SZ), but after CATL increased the price, Ganfeng Lithium did not give a higher price, which made the market once believed that CATL would win Millennium Lithium.
Although the acquisition failed, the desire of the two A-share lithium battery giants to control upstream resources reflects the importance of raw materials to the company's future production capacity. According to relevant research reports, as of 2020, the lithium reserves were about 86 million tons, of which 94% of the lithium mineral resources were located outside my country.
The high-priced environment and resource anxiety are forcing battery factories and terminal car companies to go to the front of the Taiwan market to face upstream resource vendors directly. On the other hand, CATL's production capacity expansion pace has not slowed down. According to the semi-annual report of CATL, the company's power battery and energy storage system production capacity is 65.45GWh, and the under-construction production capacity is 92.50GWh. The reporter sorted out the announcement, showing that as of the third quarter of 2021, CATL had 7 major bases, including Ningde Zhangwan District (Dongqiao/Hudong/Huxi), Ningde Cheliwan, Ningde Fuding, Liyang base, Sichuan and Qinghai base, and Germany factory. The new Yichun base was added, with a total planned production capacity of more than 500gwh. In addition to the capacity projects planned by CATL for this private placement, according to the current public information, by 2025, the company's production capacity will exceed 600gwh. Compared with the capacity scale in the first half of the year, the expansion speed and amplitude can be seen.
"In the long-term development of power batteries, lithium has long-term demand rigidity. For battery companies, ensuring upstream raw material procurement can ensure the delivery capacity of the final product. CATL and 11 Lithium Energy and other battery manufacturers have announced their capacity expansion plans this year. As mid- and downstream companies in the battery industry, they mainly purchase raw materials and produce products needed by downstream customers, and they need to withstand the pressure of upstream materials price increases," a new energy industry analyst told reporters.
"We see that the way midstream and downstream enterprises control raw material costs is generally through reasonable procurement and supply management, upstream locking price and volume locking, etc. Although CATL's raw material control in the first three quarters was excellent, compared with the above methods, investment and even acquisitions can better ensure product delivery capabilities, and also more effective in operating cost control," the above analyst added, "For the rise in lithium prices since November last year, we believe that in the medium term, new energy vehicles will drive the rapid growth of demand to intensify the supply gap, and the upward trend of lithium prices will not change. In the long run, China's new energy vehicle sales will be relatively rapid growth in the future, and lithium mines may continue to have gaps due to resource restrictions."
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