AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)12/20 Report--

On December 20, some media reported that people familiar with the matter revealed that Du Ligang, co-founder of Weima Automobile, was about to leave the company. Although he was still in Weima's enterprise WeChat, he was already in the process of leaving. In response to this news, as of the time of publication, WeiMa official has not made a response.

Founded in 2015 by Shen Hui, former vice president of Geely Holding Group, Weima Automobile is headquartered in Shanghai. Before Shen Hui founded Weima, Weima Automobile was formerly a three-electric system R & D enterprise established by Du Ligang in 2012. On June 1,2022, Weima Automobile submitted an IPO application on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. According to the prospectus, Du Ligang served as executive director. As CFO of Weima Automobile, Du Ligang is proficient in financial management and capital operation of enterprises at home and abroad. In sum, he is also a senior figure among Weima Automobile executives.

At present, WeiMa car official has not confirmed the authenticity of the above news, if the news belongs to, Du Ligang will become after Liu Bin, another runaway WeiMa co-founder. On December 15, a person familiar with the matter revealed that Liu Bin, who had previously left Weima Automobile, had joined Youyao Technology as a co-founder.

As one of the former head car enterprises of new forces, after entering 2022, WeiMa Automobile has not been too peaceful, especially in the second half of the year, there are many negative news about WeiMa Automobile in the market, including salary reduction, layoffs, store closure, or acquisition, etc. On December 5, Apollo Smart Travel Group, a listed company in Hong Kong shares, announced plans to acquire a company engaged in intelligent electric vehicles, while the potential acquiree was revealed to be WeiMa Automobile. On the same day, WeiMa Automobile plans to list in Hong Kong shares through Apollo Smart Travel Group. To this news, WeiMa car related responsible person response: "The above is only market rumors, WeiMa for market rumors do not comment, but also pay attention to the company official response, official information is correct information."

Before this, WeiMa Automobile also made salary cuts and layoffs and closed some stores due to financial pressure. On November 21, Shen Hui, CEO of WeiMa Automobile, released an internal letter from all employees, showing that in order to cope with the pressure of funds, the management of the company took the lead in actively reducing salary by half, and at the same time, the company will reduce operating costs through a series of financial measures. Among them, managers at M4 level and above actively reduce salary and pay 50% of basic salary; other employees pay 70% of basic salary; adjust company pay day, cancel year-end bonus and other bonuses, suspend car purchase subsidy, etc. In response to the pay cut, WeiMa automobile personage said to the media: "This year's supply chain problems, capital market winter and other adverse factors continue to plague the automobile industry, for the new brand has been established development is really easy, WeiMa is still trying to get through the winter, but has not allowed to sell cars through 'burning money', and other manufacturers compete for the ranking of the list."

At the end of November, it was reported that Weima's Shanghai headquarters had started layoffs, while outsourcing company personnel were also leaving on a large scale. Reported that, WeiMa car Shanghai a number of stores closed, From about 20 to about 12, Now sell a lot of inventory cars, Among them pre-sales after-sales integration of 4S stores only five or six, Some stores recently closed, Official website has not timely removed the list.

Compared with the current mainstream "Wei Xiaoli", Weima Automobile has more abundant resources, including two self-built factories with a production capacity of 250,000 vehicles, a financing scale of more than 30 billion yuan and more than 600 distribution stores. More important is the founder's experience. Before founding Weima, Shen Hui successively held management positions in Borg Warner, Fiat, Volvo and Geely automobile core parts enterprises and vehicle enterprises. Therefore, compared with Li Bin, He Xiaopeng and Li Xiang, Shen Hui accumulated a lot of experience in automobile manufacturing. However, the abundant resources and experience did not bring better prospects to Weimar Automobile, but fell into serious financial and sales pressure.

According to the prospectus of WeiMa Automobile, the revenue of WeiMa Automobile from 2019 to 2021 was 1.7621 billion yuan, 2.6717 billion yuan and 4.7425 billion yuan; the corresponding net losses were 4.145 billion yuan, 5.084 billion yuan and 8.206 billion yuan respectively. The loss amount continued to increase with the year, and the accumulated loss in three years reached 17.435 billion yuan. By contrast, NIO, Xiaopeng and Ideal, which are also new forces in car-building, have net losses of 4.016 billion yuan, 4.863 billion yuan and 322 million yuan respectively in 2021. From the data point of view, although these new forces are in a state of loss, WeiMa sales only Wei Lai, Xiaopeng half, but the loss is twice as high. At present, there are EX5, W6, E.5 and M7 models, among which M7 has not yet been delivered. According to the data, the sales volume of WeiMa cars from January to November 2022 is only 32,300, down 10.26% year-on-year.

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