?Loss of 860 million in three years
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Author | Chumen Cao Tingting
An autonomous driving company that Li Xiang likes, The bell is about to ring.
As one of the first companies in China to commercialize autonomous driving solutions, Zhixing Automotive Technology officially submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on April 4.
< p>Source: ProspectusHalf a month ago, Bloomberg reported that Zhixing Technology may plan to raise US$200 million to US$300 million through a Hong Kong IPO.
Zhixing Technology stated in its prospectus. Zhong said that the funds raised from the IPO will be mainly used for capital expenditures related to improving autonomous driving solutions and product research and development, as well as expanding sales and service networks, R&D headquarters, production plants and new production lines.
The growth path of Panzhixing Technology has been favored by many capitals, and it has received investment from institutions such as Mingshi Capital, China Central Capital, and CCB International. The most concerning thing is that Li Xiang and Li Auto also participated in two rounds of investment. Currently holding 4.5% of the shares.
Source: Tianyancha
Behind the listing of Zhixing Technology is the early exploration of Li Auto in the field of autonomous driving.
According to Fruo. According to Sullivan, Zhixing Technology is the second largest third-party autonomous driving domain controller provider in China based on autonomous driving domain controller sales revenue in 2022, with a market share of 26.2%
01.
? Loss of 860 million in three years
Zhixing Technology was established at the end of 2016. The company is headquartered in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. It has now become a leading domestic autonomous driving solution provider. OEMs need to provide overall system solutions and supporting smart cameras and autonomous driving domain controllers.
After its establishment at the end of 2016, Zhixing Technology completed a 100 million yuan Series A financing in 2020. Zhixing Technology’s first autonomous driving solution has achieved mass production.
The prospectus shows that from 2020 to 2022, Zhixing Technology’s revenue will be 47.655 million yuan, 178 million yuan, and 1.326 billion yuan, respectively. Gross profits were 9.596 million yuan, 36.783 million yuan and 111 million yuan respectively.
Source: Prospectus
Although revenue has increased significantly, Zhixing Technology's losses have also increased in 2020. , the net losses during the year in 2021 and 2022 are 53.827 million yuan, 464 million yuan, and 342 million yuan respectively. The cumulative loss in the past three years is 860 million yuan.
The expansion of losses also means that the gross profit margin is declining. The gross profit margin in 2020 and 2021 will be 20.1% and 20.6% respectively, while in 2022 the gross profit margin will plummet by 12.3 percentage points to 8.3%.
Source: Prospectus
However, overall, Zhixing Technology's revenue has maintained a rapid growth trend, with a compound annual growth rate of 427.2% from 2020 to 2022, and a year-on-year growth rate of 644% in 2022.
The main revenue of Zhixing Technology is the sales of autonomous driving solutions and products, autonomous driving-related R&D services and assembled printed circuit board (PCBA) products. Among them, autonomous driving solutions and products include autonomous driving domain controllers, intelligent forward-looking cameras (iFC), etc.
Source: Zhixing Technology iMotion
According to data from Sullivan Consulting, Zhixing Technology is one of the first companies in China to achieve large-scale commercialization of autonomous driving solutions. From 2020 to 2022, Zhixing Technology plans to deliver more than 100,000 autonomous driving domain controllers.
The company will begin to receive revenue from autonomous driving domain controllers in 2021. In 2021 and 2022, Zhixing Technology’s autonomous driving domain controller revenue will be 86.011 million yuan and 1.250 billion yuan respectively, accounting for the company’s total revenue 48.2% and 94.3%.
Source: Zhixing Technology iMotion
It is not difficult to see from the prospectus that Zhixing Technology has a certain degree of self-hematopoietic ability.
At the same time, Zhixing Technology’s financing capabilities are not bad either. Public information shows that since its establishment, the company has conducted multiple rounds of financing, accumulating hundreds of millions of yuan in financing. Investment institutions include Mingshi Capital, iFlytek Ventures, China Merchants Qihang, HL Klemove, Qianrong Holdings, Yafeng Investment, De Zaihou Capital, etc.
In 2018, Zhixing Technology completed Series A financing of 100 million yuan. In 2020, it announced the completion of Series B1 financing, led by CCB Suzhou Science and Technology Innovation Fund, followed by Heyu No. 1, and the original shareholder Ideal Automobile, Mingshi Capital, and China Venture Capital continued to invest.
In 2021, Zhixing Technology launched another Series C financing. The prospectus shows that the total scale of Series C financing is approximately 616 million yuan. Among them, the C1 round of financing was 270 million yuan, corresponding to a valuation of 2.27 billion yuan. The C2 round of financing was 98.5 million yuan, corresponding to a valuation of 2.599 billion yuan. The C3 round of financing was 247.5 million yuan, with a corresponding valuation of 3.3 billion yuan.
Source: Prospectus
02
Li Xiang participated in two rounds of investment
During the financing process of Zhixing Technology, Li Auto Appeared twice, once in the Pre-A round and the other in the B round. According to the latest news in the prospectus, among the company’s shareholders, Li Auto holds 4.5% of the shares through Beijing Chehejia.
Li wanted to invest in Zhixing Technology because of his own ideal car.
Source: Li Auto
In December 2017, Li Auto participated in the Pre-A round of financing of Zhixing Technology. Not long after Li Xiang entered the car manufacturing field, his first model Li Auto ONE has not been released yet. Investing in Zhixing Technology can also make up for its own shortcomings.
In July 2020, Li Auto once again participated in the Series B financing of Zhixing Technology. It was also in the same month that Li Auto officially launched on Nasdaq.
Zhixing Technology can be successfully listed this time, and Li Xiang will have another IPO.
In recent years, Li Auto’s investment areas have continued to expand, involving lidar, autonomous driving, new energy, unmanned vehicle logistics, etc., all related to smart cars.
In addition to Zhixing Technology, Li Xiang invested 400 million yuan in Sunwanda’s power battery company last year. Its valuation has reached 32 billion yuan, and it is already considering an IPO on the Science and Technology Innovation Board.
After years of being with Li Xiang, Zhixing Technology has gradually grown into a mature company and accumulated a rich circle of friends.
Zhixing Technology’s current products can be divided into three routes.
1. We have in-depth cooperation with mobileye on the product SuperVision. This product has specific scenarios during use, mainly for complex urban working conditions.
2. The front-view camera product line, which includes a camera and a small controller, is also called a front-view all-in-one machine.
3. The integrated parking and parking domain controller has now developed to have multiple functions such as memory parking, automatic parking, 360 panoramic views, etc., and supports high-end navigation assisted driving (NOA) functions.
Source: Zhixing Technology iMotion
As the core product business of Zhixing Technology, it is divided into two business lines in research and development: one is a medium computing power platform, suitable for 10-20 The other is a slightly medium to large computing power platform, which is suitable for cars with a higher price range.
Since its development, Zhixing Technology has reached strategic cooperative relationships with many car companies. After receiving orders for over 100,000 sets of Jikrypton 001 in October 2021, it has successively won orders from Great Wall, Chery, Geely, etc. Mass production orders from an OEM.
Although Li Xiang has been running with him for 6 years, Zhixing Technology’s largest customer is currently Geely. As of December 31, 2021 and 2022, Zhixing Auto’s revenue from Geely Group was 94.5 million yuan and 12.78 million yuan respectively. billion, accounting for 53% and 96.4% of the total revenue in the same period.
The initial cooperation between Zhixing Technology and Geely Group can be traced back to October 2020, when the two parties began to cooperate in the development of L2++ level autonomous driving solutions and products. Since then, Zhixing Technology has become one of the main suppliers of Geely Group’s autonomous driving solutions and products (especially its Extreme Krypton series).
In addition, it has also reached in-depth cooperation with Mobileye, with annual procurement volume exceeding 900 million yuan. As of December 31, 2020, 2021 and 2022, Zhixing Automobile's purchases of Mobileye were 5.7 million yuan, 78.4 million yuan and 922 million yuan respectively, accounting for 13.6%, 54.6% and 922 million of Zhixing Technology's total purchases in the same period respectively. 69.2%.
Source: Zhixing Technology iMotion
The prospectus shows that most of Zhixing Technology’s revenue comes from the sales of Zhixing Technology’s autonomous driving solutions and products to OEMs, which are jointly delivered There are more than 100,000 autonomous driving domain controllers.
03?
Introduction to the founding team
Tianyancha shows that Zhixing Technology currently has 11 senior executives. As one of the earliest ADAS teams in China, the core founding team of Zhixing Technology basically comes from Bosch China.
Song Yang, founder and CEO of Zhixing Technology, graduated with a master's degree in electronics and information from the University of Science and Technology of China. He was the general manager of KSS Active Safety China.
Source: Zhixing Technology iMotion
Before founding Zhixing Technology, Song Yang had 10 years of working experience in Bosch China and was the founder of Bosch China’s autonomous driving R&D department. , so Zhixing Technology has achieved the ultimate in system integration and cost control capabilities for mass production projects.
Not long ago, Song Yang also attended the China Electric Vehicles 100 People Forum and shared his views on the synergy of intelligent driving software and hardware.
Luo Hong, another founder of Zhixing Technology, joined Zhixing Technology in April 2017. Luo Hong graduated from Chengdu University with a bachelor's degree in automation. She was the best inventor of Bosch China in 2014. She is proficient in automotive electronic controller hardware development and is an expert in the field of FMEA.
Source: Zhixing Technology iMotion
In 2015, Luo Hong joined kss and established the hardware development department. She has 8 years of experience in hardware development and 4 years of experience as a Bosch senior hardware engineer. She is responsible for Bosch The Automotive Electronics Division has developed hardware for innovation projects in China and has also obtained 5 national patents.
Lu Yukun, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Zhixing Technology, has more than 10 years of experience in R&D management in the automotive industry. He once served as the manager of Bosch's intelligent driving R&D department and the former innovation investment director of Nexteer Asia Pacific. He was also one of the first domestic ADAS and autonomous driving system experts. ?
Source: Zhixing Technology iMotion
Lu Yukun once said in an interview with the media that the founding team of Zhixing Technology is familiar with the standard routines of car manufacturers in selecting suppliers, and has great experience in technology research and development for enterprises. First mover advantage.
At present, Zhixing Technology has obtained designation letters from 14 well-known OEMs, including Geely Automobile, SAIC-GM-Wuling,