Wen Peng Suping
Although new investors have been successfully introduced, Chery's mixed reform is not smooth.
Recently, Tencent News "Wang Qian" reported that a year ago, it planned to invest 654.38+09.6 billion yuan in the Qingdao Wudaokou Fund of Chery, and now it is seeking financing restructuring with a scale of 6 billion yuan.
According to the above report, Qingdao Wudaokou Fund has spent nearly 654.38+000 billion yuan on this project. However, at present, the funders of the fund are all state-owned capital in Qingdao, and the managers of Qingdao Wudaokou Fund are unable to solve the following financial problems.
Chery and Qingdao Wudaokou Fund successively denied the above news. 12, 10 In the evening, Chery Holdings issued an official statement saying that Chery's capital increase and share expansion project had been successfully completed, and the hype reports recently released by some media were seriously inaccurate. Zhou Jianmin, the actual controller of Qingdao Wudaokou Fund, Chery Holdings and Vice Chairman of Chery Automobile, also responded to the media that without refinancing, Chery's mixed improvement exhibition went smoothly.
65438+February 65438+April, some insiders familiar with Chery's mixed reform project told think tank Jun that from the legal procedure, Chery's mixed reform has indeed ended, and the related fund restructuring financing actually involves the "internal fund adjustment" of the mixed reform subject. At the same time, he said that the relevant foundations have introduced some private capital to achieve real mixed reform, and Anhui state-owned assets may also participate in the future as needed.
Mixed reform is a key step for Chery to advance. In recent years, the development of this automobile group, which used to be in a corner of Wuhu City, Anhui Province, is not satisfactory. With the help of this mixed reform, Chery is expected to further market, completely untie the shackles of institutional mechanisms, and at the same time improve its performance, it also has the opportunity to land in the secondary market and gain more chips for long-term development.
Since the second half of this year, with the listing of a number of cost-effective models, Chery's performance in the automobile market has gradually improved. However, for a car company, a short-term rebound can't sit back and relax. In the highly competitive automobile market, whether it can formulate its own development strategy and promote its implementation is the long-term way to survive-this is also the problem that Chery needs to solve at present, regardless of whether the mixed reform is successful or not.
Missed the critical period at the end of August?
From Chery's point of view, the mixed reform is to introduce new funds first. However, combined with the information of all parties, it seems that not all the funds for this mixed reform are in place.
According to Tencent News, at present, Qingdao Wudaokou Fund has paid two payments, one is 40% of the capital increase of Chery Holdings and Chery Automobile, totaling 5.787 billion yuan, and the other is the equity acquisition in Huatai Asset Management Office, totaling 465.438+300 million yuan.
Although the car purchase money is also real money, it obviously has nothing to do with Chery. In other words, according to the above report, Chery only got less than 6 billion yuan after the mixed reform.
At the end of August, some insiders of Chery told the media that Qingdao Wudaokou Fund delayed the delivery of the "second capital increase". It is reported that according to the payment arrangement of the capital increase price in the equity transaction agreement, the investor should pay 40% of the capital increase within five working days after the agreement comes into effect, and pay the remaining 60% of the capital increase within 270 days after the agreement comes into effect-in terms of time, the end of August is the deadline for paying the remaining capital increase.
However, since the beginning of this year, neither Chery Holdings nor Chery has updated the relevant equity information.
According to the information on Qixinbao, Qingdao Wudaokou Fund ranks among the three major shareholders of Chery Holding, with the subscribed capital contribution of about 2.9 billion yuan, accounting for 46.8% of the total shares of Chery Holding, which is just the sum of the shares released by Chery Holding's capital increase project (30.99%) and Huatai Asset Management's previous shares in Chery Holding (15.78%), and the change time of equity is 20/kloc-0.
According to an annual report of 20 19 of Chery Holdings, on February 6 of that year, the company obtained the paid-in capital of Qingdao Wudaokou Fund, with the amount of about 175 billion yuan, and the subscribed capital of 2.9 billion yuan was on August 28, 2020.
Chery Automobile, another main body of Chery's mixed reform, has no information about the change of equity, and only changed its registered capital after the end of 20 19 12 13, increasing from about 4.46 billion yuan to 5.47 billion yuan.
Based on the above information and media reports, it is certain that the end of August this year is a key node. Earlier, Yin Tongyue, Chairman of Chery Holdings, also said that the mixed reform of Chery is expected to be completed by the end of August.
Is the remaining capital increase and paid-in registered capital of Chery Holdings really not in place? The paid-in funds were not disclosed on the industrial and commercial platform, but the above-mentioned insiders close to Chery's mixed reform project told think tank Jun that Qingdao Wudaokou Fund was indeed introducing new investors. "Qingdao (government) money is the first, but it still needs some private funds to support it. According to the needs of the next step, Anhui's state-owned assets may also come in a little. "
In addition, how much has the capital increase of Chery Automobile landed? According to Tencent News, Qingdao Wudaokou Fund has paid 40% of the capital increase of Chery Automobile, but the equity structure of Chery Automobile has not changed.
Some insiders analyzed this reporter: "When the registered items change, enterprises will generally go to the Industrial and Commercial Bureau for approval and change registration. The relevant information of Chery Automobile has not changed, which only shows that it does not want to change itself-it may be that the other party's agreement is not satisfactory, or it may be to leave one more card. "
It is worth mentioning that even after the capital increase and share expansion, this year, Chery has been repeatedly reported that it will receive bank credit: in April this year, Guangfa Bank approved a group credit line of 7 billion yuan for Chery Holdings and its subordinate member enterprises; On August 19, 2009, China Construction Bank will also increase the credit line for Chery Holdings to 185 billion yuan.
Capital operation "controversy"
Qingdao Wudaokou Fund is reorganized and financed during the project implementation. According to the analysis of investors in the automobile industry, there are two possibilities: first, the initial funds have not been raised in place, and second, the funds raised by stages have started the next stage of financing. If it is the first case, it means "there is a problem in raising funds": the investor either has no money or is unwilling to invest.
However, the above-mentioned people close to the Chery mixed reform project denied this statement. He told think tank Jun that Qingdao's state-owned capital has been exhausted according to legal requirements, and the current reconfiguration is mainly for the fund to introduce private capital to achieve the purpose of real mixed reform. "If it is all owned by Qingdao, what is the difference from the original?"
According to Qixinbao Information, the main shareholders of Qingdao Wudaokou New Energy Automobile Industry Fund Enterprise (Limited Partnership) are Jinan Jiading Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership) and Jinan Chang Ying Jinan Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership). Their contribution ratio is 49.5% respectively, and the subscribed capital contribution is 654.38+000 billion yuan. Previously, both companies belonged to Shandong Expressway Group, but in June this year, the ownership structure and registered capital changed.
Among them, the controlling shareholder of Jiading became Qingdao Chengxin Holding Group, with the state-owned assets operation service center in Jimo District of Qingdao behind it. The registered capital of the company was changed from 200 million yuan to 654.38+08 billion yuan. The situation of taking Jinan is a little more complicated. In addition to Xincheng Hengye Group, a subsidiary of state-owned assets in Jimo District, Qingdao, Qingdao Travel Investment Zhong Jun Management Co., Ltd. holds 35% of the shares, and the other 65% is held by a private equity fund named Zhong Jun Tianbao Capital Management (Beijing) Co., Ltd. in Beijing-from this point of view, a small amount of private capital has entered the market.
In fact, the Chery mixed reform project has been controversial since the dust settled. The above-mentioned investors in the automobile industry believe that Qingdao Wudaokou Fund does not see any industrial capital background, and nominally participates in Chery's mixed reform, in fact, in order to operate Chery's listing, and at the same time, it is also to attract more funds by pulling Qingdao's state-owned assets into the partnership. "However, the difficulty in listing Chery may be the direct cause of some capital withdrawal or financing difficulties."
Hu Jing, a senior consultant of Zhiben Consulting, also wrote an article analyzing that there will be many uncertainties when Chery chooses Qingdao Wudaokou Fund as a strategic investor, because the latter's main business is investment and asset management, investment consulting, etc., and it is completely a layman in the automobile industry. "It seems that this company is not the best choice for Chery, and the effect of mixed reform in the future remains to be seen."
The above-mentioned people close to Chery's mixed reform project also denied this statement. He pointed out that participating in Chery's mixed reform is not for listing. Judging from Chery's current situation, there are still many obstacles to listing in the short term. Investors still invest in shares with long-term industrial thinking, mainly hoping for future performance growth and potential cooperation.
"Qingdao's money is industrial investment." The above people stressed. An article published by official website, the district government of Jimo, Qingdao, also pointed out that the shareholding in Chery Automobile is closely related to Qingdao's industrial layout, and Jimo's desire to introduce automobile production capacity is particularly urgent. The new automobile industry city under its jurisdiction even shouted the target slogan of "double hundred billion". According to the plan, Chery will set up a new energy automobile factory in Jimo District.
According to Tencent News, Chery's mixed reform will be reorganized at the business level, and it will also promote the listing of some sectors. At the strategic level, it puts forward "manufacturing-oriented, service value-added and financial assistance" to upgrade, transform or withdraw the existing business lines. Among the listed projects, Chery Automobile, Chery Yin Hui, Chery New Energy and Chery Parts are all planned. Among them, Chery Automobile plans to be listed on the A-share main board in 2022, Chery Yin Hui plans to be listed in Hong Kong, and Chery New Energy plans to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board or Nasdaq.
What is Chery's solution?
While the mixed reform process has once again attracted attention, Chery has just released a good monthly sales report card of 1 1. Automobile is the most important business segment of Chery Holdings, and it is also an important window to observe the effectiveness of its mixed reform.
It is said that in the month of 165438+ 10, Chery Holdings sold 10.2 million vehicles, up 15.9% from the previous month and up 36.4% year-on-year. The monthly sales volume and growth rate hit a new high in recent years. Among them, Chery Automobile sold 65,000 vehicles, up 18.3% from the previous month, up 52% from the same period last year, and maintained double growth year-on-year and month-on-month for six consecutive months.
In recent months, with the launch of a number of new models, Chery Automobile has "returned a lot of blood". Since the mixed reform, Chery has accelerated the pace of launching new products this year, especially in the second half of the year, which has listed a new generation of Tiggo 5x, a new generation of Tiggo 8 and Tiggo 3x? PLUS and other models have implemented the "big single product strategy" on all models, which effectively promoted the rapid increase of sales.
However, from the perspective of the whole year, Chery's sales volume is still not optimistic, and it is in the middle of the sales ranking of car companies, and there is still a big gap with Geely, Great Wall and Changan. According to the sales data of some manufacturers, as of June165438+1October, Chery Automobile has sold 497,000 vehicles this year, which is less than 70% of the sales of Great Wall Motor in the same period.
"Chery has been bleak for a long time before, and it has done well this year, mainly by launching some models with good cost performance." 65438+February 65438+May, some people in the automobile consulting industry told think tank Jun that Chery's long-standing problems had not been solved. In the long run, the brand system and product structure need to be further combed.
After the failure of multi-brand strategy in the early years, in 20 13, Chery released the enterprise strategy of "Technology Chery" and a brand-new brand development strategy, returning to a brand. Subsequently, Chery successively sold Qoros and Yi Kai, and concentrated on operating three sub-brands of Xingtu, Chery and Jietu, which were responsible for the high, medium and low-end markets respectively. However, these three sub-brands did not win the differentiation advantage for Chery, but competed with each other to form a diversion.
In particular, the positioning of high-end Star Road brand, sales have been tepid. However, in the context of the collective surge of independent brands in China, Starway is undoubtedly highly anticipated by Chery and its head Yin Tongyue.
The organizational structure and the deep adjustment of the senior management team can be seen. At the end of 2020 10, Chery established an independent Star Road Automobile Division, with Gao Xinhua and Jin Yibo, veterans of Chery, helping Star Road. Gao Xinhua, former deputy general manager of Chery Automobile Co., Ltd. and president of R&D Institute of Automotive Engineering Technology, officially served as general manager of Xingtu brand, and Jin Yibo, assistant general manager of Chery Holding Group Co., Ltd. served as deputy general manager. Chen Yiqi, who joined Xingtu as the general manager of the sales company in March this year and came from Dongfeng Department, formed a brand-new management organization structure and senior management team.
With the further enrichment of vehicles based on the new Mars architecture, Yin Tongyue undoubtedly hopes that the golden combination of "Gao Xinhua+Jinyibo+Chen" can greatly enhance the product strength and brand strength of Starway and seize the due share of this market segment.
In fact, Chery is particularly cautious in this brand boom of new energy vehicles. Since the beginning of this year, major domestic car companies have collectively opened the road to collective success, and have launched new brands focusing on high-end intelligent pure electric vehicles, but Chery has been slow to make relevant moves.
The above-mentioned people believe that only a few independent brands can really survive the second highest in this round. It is not necessarily a bad thing that Chery has not participated, but for Chery, the polishing of products and brands is still very important.
"High-end unsuccessful, cost-effective is the way out. Follow-up technical investment, introduction of high-end talents, etc. This is no small challenge for Chery, and this may also be where mixed reform can play a role. " The above-mentioned people finally said. ?
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.