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A few days ago, a car blogger posted that a well-known battery energy factory, formerly known as the Power Battery Division of a northern car company, has launched large-scale layoffs. The comments sparked widespread discussion, and the company is also speculated to be Honeycomb Energy, which was born in the Great Wall car power battery division.

Yang Hongxin, chairman and CEO of Honeycomb Energy, announced some measures through Weibo on Feb. 27, including shrinking the industrial layout and focusing on the development of the main business in the future. At the same time, we should increase the implementation of the elimination of the last and poor performance personnel, optimize the performance appraisal mechanism and adjust the salary system, in order to cope with the changes in the lithium battery industry, such as overcapacity, price volume, fierce competition and so on. In addition, the company's "profound changes" include "downsizing the upstream incubation business, shrinking the industrial layout, focusing on the development of the main industry in the future, strengthening scientific production scheduling, and continuously reducing personnel and increasing efficiency through lean production." increase technological innovation and continuously realize differential competition

Honeycomb Energy was born out of Great Wall Motor and officially spun off from Great Wall Motor in 2018 to become a brother company of Great Wall Motor, but the actual controller is Wei Jianjun. According to the prospectus, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Automobile, controls 40.26% of the company through Baoding Ruimao and Great Wall Holdings, and controls 76.81% of the voting rights of the company.

The customers of Honeycomb Energy cover many mainstream vehicle enterprises at home and abroad, and have reached cooperative relations with Great Wall Automobile, Geely Automobile, Zero running Automobile, Dongfeng Automobile, Lantu Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile, ideal Automobile, Beamlight Automobile, Cyrus Automobile, Hezhong New Energy Automobile and other vehicle enterprises. among them, Geely Automobile, Lantu Automobile, Hezhong Automobile, Wuling Automobile and other projects have been newly developed since 2023. As one of the battery manufacturers with comprehensive layout of PHEV products, Honeycomb Energy products have been loaded into more than 20 models of mainstream car companies, such as ideal, Lantu, Great Wall, etc., and the L400 short knife flying stack PHEV battery launched by the company has become a popular style in the industry. In the Zengji new energy vehicle market, ideal L7, Lantu FREE, Lantu Dreamer, Hezhong Naxi S and other models also use honeycomb energy ternary lithium-ion batteries.

Although it is spun off and has many partners, Honeycomb Energy is difficult to be independent. Relevant data show that the operating income of honeycomb energy from 2019 to 2022 is 929 million yuan, 1.736 billion yuan, 4.474 billion yuan and 9.97 billion yuan respectively. From 2019 to 2022, the net losses were 326 million yuan, 700 million yuan, 1.154 billion yuan and 2.256 billion yuan respectively. For most power battery enterprises, the difficulty of making profits has something to do with the characteristics of the battery industry. Due to the limitations of the development of the industry itself, the battery manufacturing industry is a heavy asset industry, whether it is the early construction of plant, purchase of equipment, reserve of raw materials, or the middle and later stage of technological research and development and production line upgrading, need a lot of start-up capital, so the return period is relatively slow.

On November 18, 2022, the Shanghai Stock Exchange accepted the IPO application of Honeycomb Energy, but the Shanghai Stock Exchange rejected the IPO application of Honeycomb Energy twice. On December 22, 2023, the Shanghai Stock Exchange disclosed that the listing application status of Honeycomb Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Honeycomb Energy) has been "terminated". Honeycomb Energy responded that considering various factors and in the best interests of the company and its shareholders, Honeycomb decided to withdraw its A-share application and consider launching other financing options.

At noon on February 29th, Yang Hongxin once again announced through the public development of Weibo, "before and after the launch of the Tank 700, we received notice of a substantial increase in battery orders in March." so this week in the emergency recruitment of front-line workers, there are three cell production lines emergency resumption of production, half a month ahead of the original plan to resume production after the Spring Festival. " It is understood that the Tank 700, a model under the Great Wall tank brand, was officially launched on February 26, with a total of three models, the extreme version, the extreme version and the limited version, with a price range of 42.80-700000 yuan.

In addition, Yang Hongxin also disclosed that Honeycomb Energy has also received advance notice of European customer delivery plans, so the short knife production line of the Yancheng factory has also resumed production ahead of the festival. Short knife battery is a battery category launched by Honeycomb Energy in 2019, which adopts long and thin design to improve space utilization, energy density, safety and so on.

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