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Weima, a new power car-building company, announced four wage optimization measures at an internal employee communication meeting, the 21st Century Business Herald reported. According to the report, due to payback and financial considerations, the salary distribution date of employees has been postponed from the 8th to the 25th since November; at the same time, executives above the deputy general manager will be paid 50% monthly salary, and employees below M4 will receive 70% monthly salary; in addition, all car purchase subsidies and year-end bonuses, 13 salary and 14 salary will be suspended.

In response to relevant reports, Weimar said that senior executives take the initiative to cut salaries and other measures, in order to actively achieve strategic goals such as reducing costs and efficiency, and improving the profit structure, with a view to the steady development of the industry in the cold winter, and continue to provide quality services to users.

In other words, Weimar confirmed the authenticity of the pay cut, and it turns out that Weimar really needs to live frugally through the winter. According to Weima's prospectus submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Weima's annual net loss from 2019 to 2021 was more than 4 billion yuan, which was-4.04 billion yuan,-4.225 billion yuan and-5.363 billion yuan, respectively. To make matters worse, by the end of 2021, Weimar's interest-bearing debt was close to 10 billion yuan, but its cash reserves were only 4.156 billion yuan. By comparison, Wei Xiaoli's cash reserves are 55.4 billion yuan, 43.544 billion yuan and 50.16 billion yuan respectively.

Compared with the tens of billions of cash reserves of other new car-building powers, Weimar, which has been losing money for years, is indeed short of money. In order to alleviate the financial crisis, Weimar submitted its listing application to the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEx) on June 1. However, five months have passed since Weima submitted its prospectus to the HKEx. Even the Zero run, which submitted its application for listing in Weima, was listed on September 29, while Weima's listing in Hong Kong has yet to make any progress.

It is worth mentioning that this is the second time Weimar has submitted an application for listing. At the end of 2020, the website of the Shanghai Securities Regulatory Bureau revealed that Weimar Travel Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Weima Automobile") received listing guidance, which is planned to be listed on Science and Technology Innovation Board in early 2021. However, in December 2020, when the Shanghai Stock Exchange revised and promulgated the rules for the examination and approval of Science and Technology Innovation Board Stock offering and listing and the measures for the Administration of the listing Committee of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Science and Technology Innovation Board's IPO policy began to be tightened, and many enterprises stopped Science and Technology Innovation Board. In April 2021, it was revealed that Weimar had suspended its application at Science and Technology Innovation Board IPO. According to reports, Weima has been questioned about the lack of science and technology, the proportion of R & D investment in revenue is not high, coupled with continuous huge losses, as well as many problems in the review of listed materials, resulting in many ups and downs in Science and Technology Innovation Board's road to listing. Of course, Weimar responded directly to the untruthfulness of the relevant reports, but Science and Technology Innovation Board's listing plan finally fell through and eventually switched to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Tianyan survey shows that since its establishment, Weimar has gone through 12 times of financing, with a cumulative financing of more than 35 billion yuan, including SAIC, Sequoia Capital China, Baidu and so on. In October 2021, Weimar received more than US $300 million in D+ round financing from PCCW, Shun Tak Group and Guangfa Shun Tak, including PCCW related to the Li Ka Shing family and Shun Tak Group to the Stanley Ho family of Macau gambling king Stanley Ho. Of course, the money was not taken in vain. In the relevant announcement, Shun Tak Group made a listing requirement for Weimar, and SAIL (a subsidiary of Shun Tak Group) is entitled to redemption if Weima fails to complete the eligible IPO within the specified time after the settlement of the share purchase agreement.

Nowadays, listing in Hong Kong has become the only way for Weima to survive, but in the current market environment, even if Weima is successfully listed in Hong Kong, it is difficult to achieve a good performance. Take zero-running cars as an example, its monthly delivery volume is basically stable at more than 10,000, which is also a good result in the new energy vehicle industry, but after listing in Hong Kong, zero-running's performance in the secondary market has been greatly surprised. On the day of listing, the share price plummeted 33.54%. The market capitalization lost 24 billion overnight, and the stock price has fallen by 62.25% so far. In addition to zero running, the share prices of NIO, ideal and Xiaopeng have all fallen by more than 50% since the beginning of the year, of which Xiaopeng has fallen by more than 80%, and NIO has also been attacked by short sellers.

From the perspective of the current market, although new energy vehicles are the investment direction in the future, after the stock prices of mainstream electric vehicle manufacturers such as Tesla, Ulai, ideal and Xiaopeng have suffered a sharp pullback, the capital market is still more cautious about the investment in new energy vehicles, especially the second-line car brands that mainly sell low-cost products, and Weima is also the case, if it lacks enough competitiveness, it is difficult to arouse the interest of investors. For Weimar, we may have to rely on products to prove their value.

According to the official website, Weimar's products currently on sale include EX5, W6 and E.5. Data show that Weimar sold a total of 28161 vehicles in the first nine months of 2022. By contrast, Xilai delivered a total of 82434 new cars, ideal cumulative delivery of 86927, Xiaopeng for 98553, Nezha and zero running for 111190 and 87602 respectively.

Weima's poor sales are directly related to its positioning and product weakness. At the beginning of its establishment, Shen Hui positioned Weima as a "Volkswagen of electric vehicles", focusing on the low-and middle-end market of 10-200000 yuan. However, the story of Volkswagen electric cars is not easy to tell. Weimar's products are neither as high-end as NIO, nor like Nezha and Zero running, but happen to be stuck in the price range of 10-200000 yuan, and this price range is still dominated by fuel car consumption. Even Xiaopeng's G3 model sales are general, most pure electric models are difficult to achieve excellent results in this price range. Of course, Weima is also aware of this, followed by the launch of the Weima EX6, the price of the bike is close to 300000 yuan, but the model has not been recognized by consumers.

In addition to positioning, the key factor affecting Weima sales is the poor quality of products. In October 2020, Weimar had to recall 1282 problematic vehicles after a number of vehicle fires broke out in Weima. After entering 2021, Weima is often exposed about vehicle fire accidents and even named by CCTV, but Weima rarely responds to the fire accidents, and then Weima seems to reduce the occurrence of fire accidents by "locking electricity", causing market controversy, but the authorities have never responded directly to the relevant problems and refused to give solutions, which will undoubtedly affect the efficiency of Weima's capital recovery, and even affect the mass production of the next generation of models.

Under the circumstances that the existing products are difficult to arouse the enthusiasm of the market, Weima will pin its hopes on the new model Weima M7. In the prospectus, Weimar said that the M7 will be equipped with industry-leading L5-level hardware, including four new Orin-X gauge-class autopilot chips with a total computing power of 1016TOPS / three variable focus lidars with a detection range of 330o11 cameras, including seven ultra-high resolution cameras and four high-resolution cameras, enable vehicles to identify obstacles up to 600m away.

As a medium and large car, under the hardware stack, it is expected that the price of the Weima M7 must be high. As a reference, the prices of the Weimar ET7 and Zhiji L7, which are close to Weima's hardware configuration, are 458000 yuan and 368800 yuan respectively, while the prices of several cars on sale at Weima have gone up to 280000 yuan. Of course, whether the market will pay for the Weimar M7 will not be answered until the new car is officially launched, but so far, Weimar has not yet announced the specific listing and delivery time.

At the end of 2014, Shen Hui left Geely and Volvo in late 2014 to acquire a company called WM Motor in Germany and changed it to "Weltmeister", a German word meaning "world champion". Unlike he Xiaopeng, who was born as a browser, Li Xiang, who was born as a website, and Li Bin, Shen Hui is very familiar with the automobile industry, making it the first car company in the new power to build a factory and deliver mass-produced cars, the first to prove that the new power is not PPT making cars. However, now Weimar has obviously lagged behind, but what it wants to prove is not falling behind, but the question of survival. Of course, it remains to be seen who will be the winner in the future.

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