There is still one day left before the arrival of 2020. Presumably many car companies have already planned their goals for 2020 and will announce them after the bell rings on New Year's Day. No matter whether the goal is big or small, at least there is a direction to strive for. However, for Waterma, dreams and struggles are just bubbles and phantoms. On December 29, Jianrui Woneng announced that on November 15, 2019, the company received a letter from the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court of Guangdong Province ("Watma") forwarded by its wholly-owned subsidiary Shenzhen Waterma Battery Co., Ltd. (2019) Guangdong 03 Po Shen No. 410 "Civil Ruling" issued by the "Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court" on November 7, 2019, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court ruled to accept the bankruptcy liquidation application of natural person Huang Ziting against Waterma.
Yes, this power lithium battery company founded in 2002 is one of the first domestic companies to successfully develop new energy vehicle power batteries and the first to achieve large-scale production and batch application. It has more than 2,000 patents. , ultimately ending up going bankrupt before the bell rang in 2020.
What I didn’t expect was that the last article in 2019 was about “bankruptcy”. It was a really nerve-wracking year. Even so, the development of the automotive field will not be based on human will. Translated into human words, there will be a lot of news about the closure and bankruptcy of power battery companies in 2020.
Who will be the next "Watma"?
Although no one wants to be the next "Watma", judging from the current development trend, anyone can become the next Waterma.
In 2017, there were 155 power battery companies in my country; in 2018, this number dropped to 105; by this year, there are only 80 power battery manufacturers left, among which they can truly realize There are only about 40 companies with installed capacity. Industry insiders predict that less than 20 companies will survive in the next three years.
This does not include Waterma, who is not of average strength, and once had unlimited glory.
In 2015, Waterma’s battery domestic market share reached 26.6, ranking fifth, second only to BYD, CATL, Lishen and Guoxuan at that time; in 2016, Waterma was Jianrui Fire Protection was acquired for 5.2 billion yuan, a premium of nearly 5 times. Jianrui Fire Protection thus changed its name to Jianrui Woneng and entered the new energy field.
In the first quarter of 2017, Waterma Battery brought a net profit increase of up to 1,681 times to Jianruiwo Neng. At that time, 98% of Jianruiwo Neng’s revenue came from Waterma. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. In the second half of 2017, Waterma's debt crisis broke out.
The announcement shows that in 2017, Jianrui Wo Neng’s annual net profit was -3.734 billion yuan; in 2018, the company’s net profit was -3.945 billion yuan. In the first three quarters of 2019, the company continued to suffer significant losses, with a net profit of -2.617 billion yuan.
Currently, Waterma has external liabilities of approximately 19.7 billion yuan and arrears of approximately 5.4 billion yuan in debt to 559 suppliers. The company's existing assets include only part of construction land, external equity investments, vehicles, inventory, machinery and equipment, accounts receivable, etc. Waterma once ranked second in the domestic new energy vehicle battery supply rankings, but now it has ended in bankruptcy, which is hard not to regret.
As for its parent company, Jianrui Woneng, it has been suspended from trading. As of the close of trading on December 22, the day before the suspension, the market value of Jianrui Woneng was only 3.9 billion yuan, a drop of nearly 9% from its high market value. become. If there was a regret medicine in this world, Jianrui Firefighting would want to drink N bowls, and would not buy Waterma even if it was killed. Unfortunately, there is no if.
According to the staff of Jianrui Woneng, dragged down by Waterma, its parent company Jianrui Woneng is also insolvent and is currently in the stage of bankruptcy and reorganization. Although the reorganization has been determined, investors, but the draft reorganization plan may still be aborted, and there is still a risk that Jian Rui Wo Neng will be terminated from listing.
As for the current situation of Waterma, some people in the industry pointed out that it is directly related to Waterma’s practice of not paying attention to core technologies and only wanting to win temporary orders through industrial alliances. This has also led to the company’s It failed to keep up with the pace of industrial development in time and was eliminated by the market.
Not only are Waterma and Jian Rui Wo Neng nearly "died", except for CATL and BYD, other companies can be said to be struggling, with their cumulative market share in the first 11 months of 2019 Very few.
From January to November, CATL ranked first with a cumulative installed capacity of 27.6GWh, with a cumulative share of 52.5; BYD ranked second with 9.61GWh, with a cumulative share of 18.3. It can be seen that Ningde Times and BYD are no longer in the same "class". More than 20 companies, including Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Lishen Battery, AVIC Lithium Battery and Yiwei Lithium Energy, account for nearly 30% of the market.
In 2020, the elimination list of power battery companies has become visible to the naked eye. Liu Fei, research director of Shenzhen Zhongou Ruibo Investment Management Co., Ltd., said that in the field of power batteries in the future, there will be no chance for small companies to succeed.
CATL is no longer the dominant company
As for CATL's position as the "leader" in the field of power batteries, BYD is obviously not convinced, but it has to admit defeat and "recognize" it its existence. Before 2017, BYD was the first in China and second in the world in terms of power batteries.
As one of the earliest car companies to conduct research and development of lithium iron phosphate power batteries, BYD ranks first in the industry. Firstly, it is because it promotes new energy buses in China first and has huge subsidies; The first is BYD's own large-scale new energy passenger vehicle business.
However, in 2017, as the incident of subsidy fraud for new energy vehicles broke out and policy subsidies continued to decline, the demand for power batteries for passenger cars also declined. BYD unfortunately fell into the trap and its business shrank.
Taking a different technical route from BYD, CATL, which holds the ace card of ternary lithium, suddenly emerged this year, successfully ousting Panasonic and BYD and becoming the world's number one in the industry since 2017.
In 2017, CATL’s power battery shipments increased by 73% to reach 11.8GWh. At that time, it alone held nearly 30% of the market and supplied more than 500 passenger car and bus models. Currently, CATL is the power battery company with the highest shipment volume globally.
However, industry insiders said that CATL, which seems to have a market share of close to 50%, actually represents risks in a certain sense.
The big reason is that CATL is known for its strength in the industry, which can be seen from its cash flow and advance receipt performance. This is good for CATL, but from the perspective of vehicle manufacturers From a perspective, they are obviously unwilling to have such a strong supplier, because this is tantamount to being choked at the most critical position in the industry chain.
A representative of a car company said, "To pick up goods from CATL now, it is not enough if you have money. It also depends on who pays more."
It can be seen that vehicle manufacturers It is necessary to support suppliers that can compete with CATL. Whether it is the addition of foreign brands or the rise of domestic brands, vehicle manufacturers will probably be happy to see the results.
The turning point that makes vehicle manufacturers happy is the cancellation of the "white list" policy for new energy vehicle power batteries.
On June 21, 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the abolition of the "Automotive Power Battery Industry Standard Conditions" (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Announcement No. 22, 2015), the first, second, third, and fourth The catalog of the first batch of enterprises that meet the standard conditions will be abolished at the same time.
This move means that Japanese and Korean power battery giants such as Panasonic, LG Chem, and Samsung SDI that have temporarily left the Chinese market due to the "white list" are expected to accelerate their return, and the domestic power battery industry will officially usher in a " Shuffle” era. At the same time, it can be seen from the top ten battery companies in global shipments in 2018 that only CATL plus the above three companies are globally competitive.
Japanese and Korean power battery giants have made preparations for "war preparations" as early as 2018 in order to "return to China".
In July 2018, LG Chem announced that it would invest US$2 billion to build a 32GWh power battery project in Nanjing. The project is expected to start mass production in October this year and reach full production in 2023; in December of the same year, Samsung SDI In a low-key manner, it restarted the second phase of the Xi'an power battery production base project that had been suspended for 2 years; in the same month, Panasonic announced that it would invest hundreds of millions of dollars to double the production capacity of its Dalian power battery factory.
In addition, BYD has now repented and begun to take the initiative. After establishing a battery joint venture with Changan Automobile, it opened the company's E platform. The latest news is that BYD is establishing a joint venture with Toyota.
The "fighting" between these power battery giants will only lead to a situation where "gods fight and the devil suffers". At the same time, the lithium battery sector will enter an era of high-quality competition.
Xu Yunfei, a new industry analyst at Guotai Junan Electronics, believes that assuming that the global electric vehicle market share reaches 30% in 2030, the net profit of the power battery industry is expected to reach 140 billion, with room for more than tenfold growth in net profit in ten years, and lithium batteries The faucet and material faucet will usher in the era of giants.
Text/Gan Fangli
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.