As the new year approaches, major brokerages have begun forecasting the economic situation for the whole year of 2025. But not long ago, the 2025 forecast released by a securities company caused an uproar. Recently, Haitong International Securities released a research report titled "Five Major Conjectures in 2025 - Sino-US competition is generally "loose externally and tight internally"".The last conjecture reads: Xiaomi acquires Weilai... The scope of use of Weilai's battery swap has been expanded, and it is even open to other car companies under patent protection. Ideal, TSLA, and Xiaomi have established their leading positions in smart driving in China.
Although Haitong International Securities added an ellipsis after "Xiaomi acquires NIO", it also stated at the end of the research report that the above is based on our understanding and analysis of technology, supervision, and competition, and provides only suggestions for direction of thinking; it is not a prediction based on sufficient evidence and information. But it still caused widespread controversy.
Subsequently, relevant people from Xiaomi and NIO responded to this.
Judging from the content of Haitong International’s research report, these five conjectures are very bold. But perhaps it is because the company involved in "Xiaomi's acquisition of NIO" is a well-known car company, which has caused greater controversy.
But why does Haitong International think NIO is the party about to be acquired?
On the one hand, or as someone from NIO said in response to the speculation, Haitong International wanted to express its recognition of the NIO brand and battery swap model when sharing internally. But on the other hand, most people will understand the acquired party as the party with worse performance or situation. Therefore, this conjecture has a more negative impact on NIO.
In fact, NIO will really have to seize the time to prove itself by 2025.
At the end of last year, NIO just celebrated its 10th birthday. It released the high-end model NIO ET9 and the new brand Firefly. It also set the goal of doubling sales in 2025 and achieving profitability in 2026.
However, the smug and ambitious Weilai experienced a bad start to the year. Letao was exposed to the news that it "forced" employees to buy cars and arranged for high battery replacement costs.
Now that this conjecture has come out, some car owners are even beginning to fear that Weilai will become the next new force to "go bankrupt."
However, looking back at this conjecture, it seems reasonable. Xiaomi may really be able to help NIO.
The two parties have previously cooperated in charging. If Xiaomi acquires NIO, it may bring better user reputation and sufficient funds to NIO, and may also help NIO achieve rapid expansion of its battery swap business.
Weilai really cannot afford to lose money anymore.
Will Xiaomi acquire NIO?
Is Haitong International Securities’ “conjecture” reasonable or outrageous?
After Haitong International's conjecture began to ferment on the Internet, Wang Hua, general manager of the public relations department of Xiaomi Group, responded to the incident on Weibo.
He said, "A made five major guesses about 2025. How should the two companies guessed by A respond?"
Then he gave three responses, one is whose guess is it and who is going to go (colloquial version for familiar friends); second, the company does not comment on third-party guesses (general version); third, what time is it and how many dishes are there? (Pretending not to wake up yet).
Compared with Xiaomi's "no response" attitude, Ma Lin, NIO's assistant vice president of brand and communication, made it clear that the company has communicated with the author of the research report, and the other party wanted to express their approval of NIO's battery swap when sharing internally. The conjecture is purely fictional.
Ma Lin also used this to promote NIO's battery swapping. "NIO is doing battery swapping in a down-to-earth manner and has connected more than 700 cities across the country. Each additional battery swapping station has a positive impact on sales. Brother Bin also recommended battery swapping models to Mr. Lei Junlei, and models from many other battery swapping cooperative brands are also on the way. Indeed, CATL, which knows the best about batteries, has launched a battery swapping model, and the value of battery swapping to electric vehicles has been seen by the entire industry."
In fact, even if there is no response from both parties, most people do not believe that Xiaomi will really acquire NIO.
From Xiaomi's perspective, its own automobile business is at a critical stage of development. Although Xiaomi SU7 became a hit, Xiaomi Auto achieved its one-year sales target one month ahead of schedule, giving Xiaomi its strongest single-quarter performance in history.
But so far, although Xiaomi's automotive business has narrowed its losses, it has not yet turned a profit.
In the first half of 2024, Xiaomi's electric vehicles and other innovative businesses had revenue of 6.4 billion yuan and a net loss of 1.8 billion yuan; in the third quarter, Xiaomi's electric vehicles and other innovative businesses had revenue of 9.7 billion yuan and a net loss of 1.5 billion yuan.
In addition, Xiaomi Motors' recent focus is on the one hand to increase production capacity to cope with rising market demand, and on the other hand to prepare for the launch of its second model YU7. At this time, it is not wise to be distracted and acquire a car company, whether in terms of funds, energy or strategic layout.
On the other hand, Weilai is not an "easy to be acquired" company.
In 2024, NIO's sales achieved rapid growth, reaching 221,970 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 38.7%. In terms of market share of pure electric models over RMB 300,000, the NIO brand has ranked first for 23 consecutive months, with a market share of over 40%.
NIO is not lacking in appeal in the capital market. On September 29 last year, Weilai had just received strategic investment from three existing shareholders. Strategic investors will invest RMB 3.3 billion in cash to subscribe for newly issued shares of NIO China, and NIO will also invest RMB 10 billion in cash to subscribe for newly issued shares of NIO China.
As of the end of September last year, NIO's balance of cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investments and long-term time deposits was approximately 42.2 billion yuan.
Recently, Weilai Holdings Co., Ltd. has also undergone industrial and commercial changes, and its registered capital has increased from approximately 7.429 billion yuan to approximately 7.857 billion yuan.
Therefore, overall, Weilai has not yet reached the point of being acquired.
But from a theoretical perspective, if this conjecture can be realized, there will be many benefits to both parties.
As Haitong Securities added when publishing the conjecture: NIO's battery swapping range has been expanded and even opened to other car companies under patent protection.
If Xiaomi can acquire NIO, the two parties will reach closer cooperation in battery swapping; NIO can also use Xiaomi's influence and marketing experience to further increase sales and further expand the scope of battery swapping business.
Weilai urgently needs to prove itself as soon as possible
Why did Haitong International’s conjecture mention Xiaomi, Tesla, Ideal, and NIO, with only NIO among those being “acquired”?
This may be related to NIO’s continued loss performance.
Since its establishment, Weilai has accumulated losses of more than 100 billion yuan. By 2024, NIO's losses in the first quarter were increasing year-on-year, and it was only in the second quarter that it achieved a net loss of 4.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year loss reduction of 16.7%.
But in the third quarter, the company's net loss expanded to 5.2378 billion yuan, and the adjusted net loss was 4.413 billion yuan, a year-on-year expansion of 11.6%.
Behind the losses, NIO’s sales are rising. In the third quarter of last year, NIO delivered 61,855 vehicles, reaching a record high. However, revenue declined, only 18.6735 billion yuan, down 2.1% year-on-year.
The dilemma of "the more you sell, the more you lose" seems to have returned to NIO.
Comparing horizontally with other car companies, NIO's situation is indeed the least optimistic. The former new force "Wei Xiaoli" has become "Li Xiaowei" from a performance perspective.
Among them, Lideal has achieved profitability for several consecutive quarters; Xpeng Motors' losses in the first three quarters were 4.46 billion yuan, while NIO's losses in a single quarter exceeded Xpeng's losses in the first three quarters.
In addition, almost all new car-making companies have set the goal of turning around losses in 2025. For example, Xpeng, Leappao, Xiaomi, etc. have all stated that they plan to achieve profitability in 2025. Only NIO expects to achieve profitability in 2026.
With poor performance and losses as it sells more, Weilai has been trying to save itself.
In September last year, the Ledo brand under NIO launched its first model, the Ledo L60, targeting the family car market. Previously, NIO had launched a new luxury model, the NIO ET9, to hit the high-end market. It also released a new brand Firefly on the same day, positioning itself as a pure electric small car and entering the small car market.
But judging from the sales of new products, several new cars released in 2024 have not reached the point of becoming popular models.
Taking the 2024 Weilai EC6 released in March last year as an example, sales in December 2024 were 7,406 units. Another example is the Ledo L60 launched by NIO, which just achieved sales exceeding 10,000 in December last year.
The sales of popular models of other car companies, such as Xiaopeng MONAM03, Lideal L6, Xiaomi SU7, Huawei Wenjie M7, etc., have exceeded 10,000 or even 20,000 in the first month of their launch, and their monthly sales can basically maintain around 10,000 units.
Recently, news has circulated in the market that "Ledo forces employees to buy cars."
According to chat records circulating on the Internet, Ledo Motors forces every salesperson to buy a Ledo L60 and recycle it after six months, but there is no contract agreement.
Subsequently, Qinghua, vice president of Ledao, responded that the problem stemmed from a store manager in Wenzhou who adopted an overly blunt method of communication and had been severely criticized. The company hopes that employees will drive its own brand vehicles in order to have a deeper understanding of the products. In addition, the company also provides certain preferential car purchase policies to front-line employees and store managers.
Users on social platforms are still concerned about Ledo's "forced employees to buy cars". For example, a salesperson from Ledo told Wired that recently, consumers who come to Ledo to view cars also ask them about this matter.
In addition to doubts, there are also concerns about NIO on social platforms.
Nowadays, the "80/20 rule" of the new energy vehicle industry has gradually emerged. In 2024, while the sales of many car companies will increase sharply, many car companies will also face possible bankruptcy, and the new brands launched by many car companies will be merged.
Worries that the brands you buy are about to go bankrupt are rampant. Some Weilai car owners said in the comment area that if they had known better, they would not have bought a car from a company that was losing so much money. Now they are worried every day.
Entering 2025, Weilai must prove itself quickly.
Will Xiaomi be NIO’s helper?
Looking back at Haitong International’s speculation, the half sentence after the ellipsis focuses on NIO’s power swap business.
Xiaomi founder Lei Jun has always been optimistic about NIO's charging network construction. As early as May last year, during a live broadcast where Xiaomi Automobile executives visited Letao, Lei Jun proposed that "Xiaomi can join NIO's charging network construction if necessary."
However, this cooperation is not just for NIO. In addition to NIO's 14,000+ charging piles, Xiaomi has also launched charging network cooperation with Xpeng and Ideal, connecting Xpeng's 9,000+ charging piles and Ideal's 6,000+ charging piles to Xiaomi's charging map, supporting real-time viewing of dynamic data on the charging map.
This cooperation with Xiaomi has the intention of "building goodwill" in the minds of consumers, but it also reflects Xiaomi's urgent need to rely on the power of its friends to accelerate the layout of charging facilities and meet the charging needs of more and more Xiaomi car owners.
In addition, Xiaomi, which does not need to spend too much thought on charging, can also devote more energy and resources to the core aspects of automobile manufacturing.
The benefits that NIO can obtain are self-evident. Through the open charging network, the utilization rate of NIO charging piles can be increased and operational efficiency can be optimized.
At the same time, with Xiaomi’s influence in the technology field and huge user base, NIO may be able to further expand its brand awareness and attract more potential users.
In fact, for NIO now, it must find an opportunity to turn the money it once spent into returns.
In the past ten years of development, whether it is the construction of battery swap stations or the research and development of mobile phones, chips, batteries, etc., Weilai has been burning money.
Especially in terms of the layout of battery swap stations, as of June 3 last year, NIO had deployed 2,429 battery swap stations across the country, making it the largest electric vehicle battery swap station operator in China. It can also be seen in the response of Ma Lin, an executive of NIO, that NIO’s power swap stations “have connected more than 700 cities across the country.”
But this reflects that NIO has spent a lot of money to lay out the construction of power swap stations.
According to Geek Park’s estimates, although the cost of NIO’s power swap station has declined with technological advancement, the cost of the third-generation power swap station is still about 1.5 million yuan. NIO has already invested approximately 4 billion yuan in building a battery swap station network alone. This does not include additional expenses such as venue rental, personnel operations and electricity expenses.
In addition, NIO’s R&D investment has remained high. The financial report for the third quarter of 2024 shows that NIO’s R&D investment was 3.32 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.2%.
Not long ago, NIO planned to deploy a third brand model - Firefly. The capital cost required to deploy a new brand is self-evident. Operating three brands at the same time also tests NIO's all-round capabilities from R&D to production to sales.
Judging from the current situation, Weilai has successively reached cooperation with Changan Automobile, Geely Automobile, Chery Automobile, Jianghuai Automobile, and Guangzhou Automobile Group in terms of battery replacement.
But this is not enough. Weilai needs more funds to cover the costs of vigorous research and development and new brands; it also needs to attract more partners to form a huge power-swapping ecosystem so that investments in power-swapping technology can quickly recover.
"Doubling sales next year (2025) and achieving profitability for the company in 2026 are tasks that cannot be missed." NIO founder Li Bin once said in an internal letter.
For Weilai, this "nothing can be missed" task may really need to be achieved by finding more helpers.