If time goes back to the beginning of 2020, perhaps no one would have imagined that in 2020, when the epidemic is superimposed on the auto market, the market value of several leading new car companies will soar and their CEOs will increase their wealth.

    Calculated by the value of the stocks held, in 2020 alone, Weilai's founder Li Bin's net worth soared by about 40.857 billion yuan. According to Forbes statistics, the wealth of Xiaopeng Motor's chairman He Xiaopeng has soared from 8.27 billion yuan in 2019 to 25.62 billion yuan in 2020. Ideal Auto CEO Li Xiang has been listed on the Forbes China Rich List with a wealth of 22.62 billion yuan.

    The most jaw-dropping is Tesla CEO Elon Musk. According to the latest statistics from Forbes, thanks to Tesla’s market value soaring 667% in one year, Musk’s wealth increased by $139.7 billion, and he became the world’s second richest person, second only to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ US$182 billion. Musk has become the richest man with the most wealth growth this year.

    In contrast, the bigwigs of the traditional “private top three” car companies will not have a better life in 2020, and their net assets have shrunk.

    According to data from the official website of Forbes China, the net asset value of Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, will fall from US$6.5 billion to US$4.2 billion in 2020 compared to 2018. The net asset value of Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holdings, has also shown a downward trend in the past three years, shrinking by US$1.7 billion in two years. The net asset value of BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu dropped from US$5.2 billion in 2018 to US$4.4 billion in 2020.

Data source: Forbes China's richest list, Future Auto Daily charting

    New car owner gets rich in one year

   Looking back on 2019, Li Bin was also ridiculed as the "worst person". I never thought that entering 2020, Weilai Automobile will completely turn over, and Li Bin's fortune will set records again and again.

    On January 2, 2020, the share price of Weilai Automobile was 3.72 US dollars per share. After half a year, Wei Lai is getting better. On July 10, the share price of Weilai hit a new high this year, with a closing price of US$14.98 per share.

    According to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission documents, as of December 31, 2019, Li Bin held 154,689,253 shares (155 million shares) of the company's Class A common shares with co-voting rights and co-disposal rights, accounting for 13.8% of the total share capital. This means that in half a year, Li Bin's net worth has risen from at least US$576 million (approximately RMB 3.743 billion) to more than US$2.3219 billion (approximately RMB 15.174 billion).

    The rising sales volume and the successful acquisition of large capital injections have become a catalyst for the rise of NIO's share price.

    Official delivery data shows that in the second quarter, Weilai delivered a total of 10,331 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 190.8% and a month-on-month increase of 169.2%. "From the perspective of delivery, the second quarter of 2020 set the best quarterly performance so far." At that time, Li Bin sighed.

    Immediately afterwards, Weilai obtained a comprehensive credit line of RMB 10.4 billion from 6 banks including China Construction Bank Anhui Branch.

    In the next 5 months, Weilai ushered in 5 stock price highs, which were US$20.44/share on August 26, US$48.3/share on November 12, US$55.7/share on November 23, and December 21 Of 48.95 US dollars / share.

    During this period, the market value of Weilai surpassed traditional car companies such as BMW and SAIC on November 5, ranking 6th in the global market value of auto companies with a market value of $51.4 billion, behind Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen, BYD and Daimler. On November 24, NIO successfully surpassed BYD and ranked 4th in the global auto companies market value rankings.

Source: He Xiaopeng Weibo

    In addition to the frequent news of Weilai, the share prices of Ideal and Xiaopeng have also hit record highs.

    On July 30, the share price of Ideal on the first day of listing surged 43.13% to close at 16.46 US dollars. On November 24, the ideal stock price reached a high of $43.96 per share. On August 27, Xiaopeng landed on the New York Stock Exchange. As of the close of the day, the stock price closed at $21.22. On November 24, Xiaopeng's stock price climbed to a high of $72.17 per share.

    Bai Yiyang, Research Department of CMB International, believes that the rise in share prices of the three auto companies, Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal, is mainly due to market sentiment dividends, and indirectly also affected by non-market factors in the United States. The development of the new energy automobile industry.

    Compared with the new car Three Musketeers, Tesla's stock price performance is even crazier.

    Since the beginning of this year, Tesla's stock price has been rising all the way, breaking through the 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 US dollars. On December 8, Tesla's stock price exceeded $600 again, reporting $641.76, and the market value exceeded $600 billion, reaching $616.222 billion.

    Behind the stock market's pride, Tesla "successfully" in the new energy vehicle market.

    According to data from the Federation of Travel Services, in November 2020, the sales of Model 3 exceeded 20,000 for the first time, an increase of 77.9% from the previous month.

    Based on Tesla’s outstanding market performance, on November 16, Standard & Poor’s Dow Jones Indices announced that Tesla’s stock will be included in the S&P 500 index on December 21. This means that more passively managed funds will be forced to buy Tesla shares. Currently, mutual fund assets linked to the S&P 500 index exceed US$11 trillion, of which indexed fund assets are close to US$4.6 trillion. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said, "This is another reason to be determined to be bullish on Tesla."

    From the perspective of the external environment, the industry's recovery and favorable policies have undoubtedly contributed to the "opening" of the stock prices of several leading automakers.

    The report of the Federation of Passenger Transport Associations shows that the retail volume of new energy vehicles doubled from July to November this year, boosting the auto market. With the increase of 20,000 numbers in Beijing and the rapid panic buying of new energy vehicles in Shanghai, and the expected increase in production and sales of new energy vehicles, the new energy vehicle market is expected to continue to show high growth in December.

    "Private top three" big bosses shrinking wealth

    According to the 2020 Forbes China Rich List, Li Shufu’s personal net worth was RMB 81.024 billion (US$12.4 billion). Just two years ago, Li Shufu’s personal net worth was RMB 99.97 billion (US$15.3 billion).

    In fact, since 2019, Geely Automobile has bid farewell to the continuous skyrocketing period of the past four years and began to "slow down and jog."

    The financial report shows that in 2019, Geely's net profit was 8.189 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 35%. In the first half of 2020, Geely's net profit continued to decline, down 43% year-on-year, reaching 2.3 billion yuan.

    At the same time, Geely's gross profit margin for auto sales began to decrease. The financial report shows that Geely's gross profit in the first half of this year was 6.301 billion yuan, with a gross profit margin of approximately 17.11%, which was down from 17.8% in the same period in 2019.

    "2020 will be the most difficult year in the history of the Group," Li Shufu wrote in the financial report. An Conghui, President of Geely Holding Group, said frankly, “In 2020, as the global economic turmoil is intensified, the auto industry enters the stock market and the epidemic spreads globally, the global auto industry is facing severe challenges.”

    The decline in Geely's net profit is directly related to the decline in sales. The financial report shows that in the first half of this year, Geely achieved sales of 530,400 vehicles, a year-on-year decline of 19%. Sales of automobiles brought Geely 33.72 billion yuan in revenue, a year-on-year decline of 25%.

    In addition, Geely said that since 2019, Geely will provide discounts to its distributors. In the first half of this year, Geely's average ex-factory sales price dropped by about 6% year-on-year, which affected Geely's gross profit margin.

    Not only Li Shufu, but also Wei Jianjun and Wang Chuanfu's net assets will shrink significantly in 2020. Wei Jianjun’s net asset value fell to 4.2 billion US dollars, and Wang Chuanfu’s net asset value fell to 4.4 billion US dollars.

    More important than the "number game"

    Although the heads of the "three new car-building forces" have experienced a round of skyrocketing, in terms of net asset value, there is still a big gap with the "private top three".

    According to the Forbes China Rich List, Li Bin successfully made the list in 2020, ranking 133th. He Xiaopeng and Li Xiang both rank outside 140. Among them, He Xiaopeng's wealth is 25.62 billion yuan, ranking 141. Li Xiang was on the Forbes China Rich List for the first time this year, ranking 159th with a wealth of 22.62 billion yuan.

    But if compared with the leaders of several traditional car companies, it is still far away. On the Forbes China Rich List, Li Shufu ranked 26th, Wei Jianjun ranked 38th, followed by Wang Chuanfu, ranked 39th.

    In November, although the delivery volume of new power car companies reached a new high, the total of Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng was less than 15,000. Even with Tesla, the monthly delivery volume of several new cars was not Over 40,000 vehicles are even less than the monthly sales volume of a single hot-selling model of traditional car companies. For example, in November this year, Sylphy sold 54,000 units, the new Lavida sold 48,000 units, and the new Bora sold 44,000 units.

    More importantly, in addition to Tesla, the three new car brothers are currently at a loss. In the first three quarters of this year, Weilai, Ideal, and Xiaopeng lost 3.915 billion yuan, 259 million yuan and 1.944 billion yuan respectively.

    Product spontaneous combustion, sudden acceleration and other quality problems frequently occur, and new cars are deeply mired. Tesla is even more questioned. In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for sales, how to ensure quality while rushing to work has become a major challenge for new cars. The user operation that NIO relies on is facing the problem of increasing user volume. When users expand from 10,000 to 50,000, how to ensure the ultimate service of "a dozen people serving one person"? Ideally, there is still only one car on sale. Although the sales are good, the program extension is a transitional technology after all. The next step is a question.

    For new cars, stock price performance, company market value, and personal wealth are just "digital games". Both Musk and He Xiaopeng have issued internal letters asking employees to "not just stare at the stock price." In their eyes, there are more important things than stock prices.