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Xiaopeng, which has just announced a partnership with Volkswagen, has recently been revealed to be buying luxury brand Maserati.

On August 17, a netizen named "Commander-in-Chief of Xiaopeng Automobile Air Force" posted on the Internet: Xiaopeng acquired Maserati's basic real hammer, and the internal meeting also confirmed the launch of the new brand. As soon as the news came out, it immediately attracted the attention of many netizens. Most netizens said: the credibility of the news is very low, Maserati is not so easy to buy, at least not the old brand. It is possible for both sides to work together to build a tram. However, there are still a small number of netizens said: it is not impossible, squat a follow-up.

In response to the rumor, some media contacted the relevant person in charge of Xiaopeng Motor, who responded that: the rumor is a rumor and there is no acquisition. In addition, the media sent out a screenshot of a chat conversation with he Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng Automobile. He Xiaopeng also said that it was all rumors.

In fact, with the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the news of car companies' acquisitions, purchases and cooperation between the two sides often occur. In early July, there were media reports that in order to improve the competitiveness of electric vehicles, Audi may purchase electric vehicle platform licenses from Chinese car companies to shorten the development time of its models. At that time, as soon as the news came out, many industry insiders in the market speculated or Xiaopeng car, Ulay car, Geely car and BYD and so on. In the end, however, Audi chose to cooperate with SAIC. On July 21, Audi and SAIC announced that they would jointly develop electric vehicles. On July 27, SAIC and Audi signed a memorandum of understanding that the two sides will combine their respective advantages to speed up the development of SAIC Audi's new electric models to meet the needs of Chinese users for high-end electric smart cars.

More explosive news is that on the evening of July 26, Xiaopeng and Volkswagen announced that they would work together to build cars. The two car companies signed a framework agreement on strategic technical cooperation and minority equity investment, and reached a long-term strategic partnership. In the future, we will jointly develop two electric models of Volkswagen brand for the Chinese medium-sized car market. In addition, as part of the strategic cooperation, Volkswagen will increase its capital to Xiaopeng by about $700m, acquire a 4.99 per cent stake in Xiaopeng at a price of US $per ADS15, and have a seat on Xiaopeng's board of directors as an observer. After the completion of the deal, Volkswagen will become Xiaopeng's third largest shareholder. The news brought a lot of attention on the same day, leading to a sharp rise in Xiaopeng's secondary market, hitting a recent record high in share prices. Xiaopeng's u.s. shares closed up 26.69% at $19.46 a share, with a total market capitalization of $16.85 billion.

It is worth noting that before Xiaopeng and Volkswagen announced their cooperation, due to low sales and poor financial results, they were not favored by the market for a time. According to Xiaopeng's first-quarter results, Xiaopeng's total revenue in the first quarter was 4.03 billion yuan, down 45.9 percent from the same period last year. Of this total, auto sales revenue was 3.51 billion yuan, down 49.8% from the same period last year. The gross profit margin was 1.7%, down from 12.2% in the same period last year. The gross profit margin in the first quarter was Xiaopeng's first negative gross profit margin in nearly three years. As for the decrease in gross profit margin in the first quarter, officials said that it was mainly due to the increase in sales promotion of "New year price adjustment" conducted by Xiaopeng in the first quarter price war, as well as the expiration of subsidies for new energy vehicles. Xiaopeng made a net loss of 2.34 billion yuan in the first quarter, an increase of 37.6% over the same period last year. By the end of 2022, Xiaopeng had a cash reserve of 38.3 billion yuan. Or in this financial context, it is a bit difficult to acquire Maserati.

Related information shows: Maserati was founded on December 1, 1914, the company is headquartered in Modena, is an international well-known luxury car brand. In 1968, Maserati formed an alliance with Citroen in France and Fiat in Italy to produce Citroen SM, but Maserati was on the verge of bankruptcy because of poor sales of SM models and the oil crisis. It wasn't until 1975 when de Tomasso injected 38% of the money into Maserati and the Italian government injected the remaining 62% that Maserati was finally out of trouble. Fiat bought Maserati in 1993. Figures show that Maserati delivered more than 15300 vehicles in the first half of this year, with net revenue of 1.309 billion euros, an increase of 39 per cent year-on-year.

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