Since March, ideal negative news has been constantly exposed, both true and false.
In the face of the news of various “roadside societies,” some Li tried his best to refute the rumors.
I am afraid that before they had time to explain, they had already been confirmed by the facts, or were overwhelmed by new rumors.
Following the rumors of layoffs at the factory in April, a number of sources have recently pointed out that ideal Automobile will make major layoffs.
It is even reported that the layoff plan involves all departments of the company, research and development is also relentless, of which the first to move is the intelligent driving department, the relevant “Guangjin plan” seems to have begun.
It is obvious that the ideal is in trouble.
The Q1 financial report just released for 2024 also shows that the only new car-building company in China that made a profit last year did not develop satisfactorily in the first quarter of 2024, with many important indicators falling, and even negative operating profits for the first time in a year.
The ideal pressure is not small, “I must admit that since the beginning of this year, we have faced multiple challenges of internal operations and the external environment, and our performance in the first quarter has lagged behind our expectations at the beginning of the year.
” Li Xiang in this earnings call, does not deny that the ideal so far this year’s development momentum is not as good as expected.
As early as before, when ideal announced its full-year results for 2023, the forecast for the first quarter of 2024 was that revenue would reach 31.
25 billion to 32.
19 billion yuan, an increase of 66.
3% Murray 71.
3% over the same period last year.
delivery volume was expected to be 100000 to 103000 vehicles, an increase of 90.
2% to 95.
9% over the same period last year.
The ideal is very plump and the reality is very bony.
According to the financial information just released, in the first quarter, ideal Automobile achieved an operating income of 25.
6 billion yuan, an increase of 36.
4 percent over the same period last year, a decrease of 38.
6 percent, and a net profit of 591 million yuan, down 36.
7 percent from the same period last year and 89.
7 percent from the same period last year.
The month-on-month decline in operating income is closely related to the performance of sales.
In the first quarter of this year, ideal delivered a total of 80400 new cars, an increase of 52.
9 per cent over the same period last year and a decrease of 39 per cent month-on-month.
In this regard, the ideal explanation is that due to the seasonal factors related to the Chinese Spring Festival holiday, the superimposed March sales orders are lower than expected, resulting in a reduction in vehicle delivery.
But for comparison, the first-quarter sales were 85842, which has been the No.
1 New Power sales title for three months in a row since the beginning of the year.
As a result, for a long time in the middle, the ideal did not even publish the weekly sales report.
In terms of operating profits, Chinese automobile companies, which have the largest cash reserves in China, are not optimistic about their performance in the first quarter.
The company’s operating profit in the first quarter was-585 million yuan, compared with 405 million yuan in the same period last year and 3 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The free cash flow was-5.
06 billion yuan, 6.
7 billion yuan in the same period last year and 14.
6 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023.
New cars cannot be sold, research and development will continue to be invested, and the scale of stores and charging piles are still expanding, resulting in a serious decline in operating profits.
As a result, the ideal bicycle profit margin has also dropped sharply.
Financial data show that the vehicle profit margin in the first quarter of 2024 was 19.
3%, down 0.
5% from the same period last year, and 3.
4% from the previous quarter.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, the ideal net profit of selling a car was 43000 yuan, but now it is only 7000 yuan.
To make matters worse, based on its performance in the first quarter, ideal lowered its full-year sales target by up to 240000 vehicles, or 30 per cent, from its previous target of 800000 in 2024.
If the situation of earning 36000 yuan less per car is maintained, the profit will be further lower than expected when the annual sales volume is lower than expected.
If you want to reduce the principal and insurance profits, the only controllable cost is the person.
The ideal is facing the test, and the ideal layoff seems to be a certainty.
After all, the current staffing is based entirely on the plan to sell 800000 vehicles a year, and it was previously planned that the number of stores would reach 800 by the end of this year, considering that the ideal store has always been operated directly.
A large sales force will account for a large proportion of the ideal workforce.
As a result, with the reduction of sales targets, personnel adjustments are inevitable.
For example, the sales and service operations department used to be mainly responsible for used cars, network expansion, network planning and other services that match sales.
The expansion of the department is accelerated after ideal monthly sales of more than 30, 000 units, and the team has expanded to nearly 1, 000 at the beginning of the year according to the original sales target of 800000 in 2024.
According to news that sales are currently expected to decline by 30% and the commercial verification period for new products will focus on head city testing and operation, the department is now receiving a layoff target of more than 40%, or more than 400 employees.
There are also media reports that after the May Day holiday, ideal launched a large-scale layoffs, the optimization ratio of more than 18%.
Based on an estimated total of 31600 employees in last year’s annual results, the layoffs involved 5600 people.
Apart from the service operation and recruitment departments, the most concerned thing is the intelligent driving team.
“the goal is to reduce the number of smart drivers to less than a thousand people, and it is also being carried out in the same way.
” Although the field of smart driving has become the most competitive field for new energy vehicle companies and even the whole industry, but combined with the whole development of the ideal stage, the cost of this part still exceeds the short-term benefits.
The ideal must have been investigated.
At present, the size of the Weilai smart driving team is basically about 1,000 people, but the development speed of Weilai in the field of intelligent driving is obviously faster than ideal.
In terms of scale, Weilai has achieved full push of NOP+, covering more than 230000 urban users.
Ideally, as long as the remaining team members make sure that nothing goes wrong, it is the best result.
However, from the user’s point of view, this seems to be a manifestation of “digging your own grave”.
It seems very irresponsible to “use the knife” on the intelligent driving team, which is closely related to the user’s driving safety.
Perhaps the ideal is thinking about pushing the industry to reform in its own way.
After all, the extended range route, once ridiculed as “backward technology”, is now spreading rapidly in the Chinese car market, where there are far more than ideal L-series models to choose from.
In addition, the ideal also strives to become a pioneer in the pure electricity market, and the MEGA is their first pure electric model, in an attempt to win more than 500000 of the sales in the market regardless of energy in one version.
It’s just that this time MEGA obviously failed.
Falling sharply from 3229 in the first month of March to 1145 in April, the car has failed to gain a foothold in the market above 500000 yuan, and even can’t compete with the Xiaopeng X9 next door in the MPV field.
, , , The revenue situation in the first quarter, coupled with MEGA’s failure, forced Ideal to re-examine the launch pace of pure electric products.
The three pure electric SUV models originally planned to be released in the second half of next year will also be postponed until the first half of next year.
The reason given by Li Xiang is that the scale of self-operated overfilling piles is not enough to support the needs of mid-to-high-end users, and there are also constraints in the booth of stores.
Although it sounds reasonable, everyone with a discerning eye knows the reasons behind it.
The Ideal L6 has been on the market for more than a month now.
Its sales situation has not caught people’s eyes.
It can only be said to be within the bounds.
As of the end of April, Ideal, including the L6 and MEGA, had sold a total of 106,200 new cars, which was less than 20% of the base line after the lowered annual target of 560,000.
Therefore, it is crucial to idealize how to play next.
Looking to the future, it is ideal that the delivery volume in the second quarter will reach 105,000 to 110,000, a year-on-year increase of 21.
3% to 27.1%. the total revenue will be 29.
9 billion yuan to 31.
4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.
2% to 9.4%. Whether this goal can be achieved or not may have just begun.
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