Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The Mavericks are hanging by a thread.

Mavericks Electric has reported a year-on-year decline in profits for four consecutive quarters.

According to Mavericks Electric's latest results for the third quarter of 2022, which ended September 30, Mavericks Electric's revenue for the quarter was 1.1532 billion yuan, down 6.0 percent from a year earlier. The net profit was 2.9 million yuan, compared with 91.7 million yuan in the same period last year.

There are fluctuations in business in a single quarter, which may be caused by accidental factors, but the business situation has not improved for many consecutive quarters, so it is necessary to seriously examine what went wrong with Mavericks Electric. As far as Mavericks Electric is concerned, after withdrawing the halo of "Internet car-building", it's time to calm down and sum up again.

The year-on-year decline in Mavericks electric profit began in the fourth quarter of 2021, when the net profit recorded 48 million yuan, a year-on-year drop of 18.21%. In the first quarter of 2022, the net profit suddenly dropped sharply, even a loss of nearly 30 million yuan, the year-on-year decline widened to 450.4%. There was an improvement in the second quarter of 2022, with income of 827.6 million yuan and net profit of 14.4 million yuan, but these two figures still decreased compared with the same period, at 12.4% and 84.3%, respectively.

As for the decline in revenue and profit this quarter, Mavericks Electric gave the reason in the financial report because of the decline in sales.

Data show that Mavericks Electric sold a total of 320800 electric vehicles in the third quarter of this year, down 19.2% from a year earlier. Among them, the Chinese market accounted for 82.04% of the total sales volume. But Mavericks Electric sold 263200 electric vehicles in China in the third quarter, down even more from a year earlier to 32.9%.

Data source: Mavericks Electric Financial report Cartography: what the new research agency needs to remind you is that in order to reverse the decline in sales, Mavericks Electric spent 170 million yuan on sales and marketing this season. among them, the cost of new product promotion and promotion has also increased by 53.6 million yuan compared with the same period last year, which means that a considerable portion of profits have been swallowed up by marketing expenses.

This is also the embarrassment of Mavericks Electric should not think, from the current market competition situation, Mavericks in the marketing level slightly relaxed, its situation will be more difficult.

First of all, traditional forces such as Yadi and Emma have been showing great pressure on new players such as Mavericks Electric, throwing Mavericks Electric a few streets in terms of management.

In the same market environment, Yadi sold 2.5294 million electric scooters in the first half of this year, down 17.7 per cent from a year earlier, but electric bicycles sold 3.6068 million, up 4.1 per cent from a year earlier. The company's revenue increased 13.6% year-on-year to 14.063 billion yuan, while profit increased 52.6% year-on-year to 899 million yuan.

Although Emma did not disclose specific sales, the company achieved revenue of 9.438 billion yuan in the first half of the year, an increase of 29.1% over the same period last year, and a net profit of 688 million yuan, an increase of nearly 120% over the same period last year.

Secondly, there is aggressiveness from the newcomers.

Company 9, which has been involved in the two-wheeled electric car business since 2019, has the same positioning as the Mavericks, focusing on the middle and high end of the market. Since last year, sales on the 9th began to climb, and in the first half of this year, its sales of 307000 two-wheeled electric vehicles have reached 80% of that of the Mavericks in the same period.

According to the company's plan, its new plant in Changzhou will be completed by the end of this year, when the company's two-wheeled electric vehicle production capacity will reach more than 2 million.

With the encirclement in the front and the pursuit after it, coupled with the melee of brands such as Tailing, Luyuan, Xinri, and Green Horse, the problem that Mavericks Electric now faces is not how to get out of the competition, but how to survive.

02, the high-end paradox of two-wheeled electric vehicles Mavericks Electric has developed to the present, it started with a "high-end" position, and now it is trapped in a double decline in sales and profits because of the "high-end" position.

When Mavericks Electric was founded at the beginning of 2015, the understanding of the products in the two-wheeled electric car industry was still "as long as it can run". The batteries basically used old lead-acid batteries with large weight and short battery life, and many functional brands did not even display the basic electricity accurately. The reason why one of the founders, Hu Yilin, came up with the idea of starting a business is from his own experience of buying a car, and the two-wheeled electric cars on the market are too ugly. Can not design one in person.

The emergence of Mavericks Electric, like a catfish, stirs up the pool water of the two-wheeled electric car market, directly driving the competition in the industry to a new level, so although the starting price of the first model N1 of Mavericks Electric reaches 4000 yuan, the configuration and functions that have never appeared by other brands, such as lithium batteries with a range of more than 70 kilometers, larger screens, constant-speed cruising, Bluetooth, and mobile phone unlocking, bring a fresh wind to the industry.

To some extent, Mavericks Electric, with its own efforts, opened the window for the upgrading of two-wheel electric car consumption. N1 was a great success, and even a car was difficult to find, followed by a "new GB" dividend. Mavericks Electric's high-end road did not encounter too many twists and turns to complete the listing of US stocks.

Mavericks Electric, which is too smooth, ignores the fact that there is a high demand in the two-wheeled electric car industry, but it is not as big as expected.

As a tool consumer goods, many users use two-wheeled electric vehicles as a supplement to their cars, and most of the use scenes are short-distance journey. in addition, the riding experience is greatly affected by the weather, so it can not be used around the clock like a car, so its consumption attribute that can generate a premium is very weak.

When the perspective goes down to third-and fourth-tier cities and towns, users do not need a stronger demand for high-end, but only need to meet the lowest demand for transportation with the lowest price.

Therefore, the high-end route of Mavericks Electric is destined to be a niche market, and when the policy dividend is digested, the growth of the high-end market of two-wheeled electric vehicles will be very limited. Just like serial sets, when the market space is limited to a certain range, sales volume is difficult to form scale, and scale is an important factor to improve operating profits.

Unlike cars, the unit price of two-wheeled electric vehicles is not high, and even the price of two-wheeled electric vehicles positioned as high-end products is only about 5000 yuan, so two-wheeled electric vehicles cannot achieve as high bicycle profits as cars. It can't be compared with luxury car brands.

You know, according to Citic Securities's "re-recognition of Electric two-wheelers: consumer goods under the cloak of Manufacturing", when Yadi surpassed Emma in 2017 to become the first in the industry, its bicycle profit was only 130 yuan. By 2018, bicycle profits have fallen further, to only 86 yuan.

Back to Mavericks Electric, limited by the scale of sales, not only the bargaining power of the supply chain is less than that of competitors, but also it is difficult to accumulate profits to a very high position.

On the other hand, the technical threshold of the two-wheeled electric vehicle itself is not high. After Mavericks Electric has revived the two-wheeled electric vehicle market, other brands can also quickly catch up and make up for the shortcomings in configuration and function in the form of stacking. At present, all high-end products are basically on the same level.

At this time, the competitive differences between brands show that traditional manufacturers such as Yadi and Emma have perfect layout of all kinds of products, and they usually use the high premium space set aside on high-end products as bargaining chips in the price war over and over again. You can always play the tactics of good horses versus inferior horses. For consumers, it is possible to buy products with higher configuration on the market at a lower price.

However, Mavericks Electric is unable to do so, its product layout is lack of depth, once the price line is lost, its high-end positioning is routed, which is one of the reasons why Mavericks Electric is in a dilemma.

03, overseas markets can not provide timely assistance in this quarter's financial results, the sales performance in overseas markets is one of the few bright spots that Mavericks Electric can tell. A total of 57609 vehicles have been sold, with an absolute value not high, but it has more than doubled compared with the previous quarter, with a year-on-year growth rate of 1059.8%. Mavericks Electric CEO Li Yan said optimistically, "We are growing into a global city travel company."

Overseas markets may bring some increments to Mavericks Electric, but in turn, it has to be accounted for. Can sales in overseas markets cover the marketing expenses of developing the market?

We can make a comparison: in the stronghold of the Chinese market, Mavericks Electric offline stores cover a total of 244 cities, with more than 3300 stores, while competitors Yadi and Emma have more than 28000 stores at the end of 2021.

The gap in channel is actually proportional to the scale of sales. Looking back at Mavericks Electric's overseas channels, the financial report shows that in the third quarter, it has covered 52 countries and regions through 53 dealers. At present, it has more than 180 flagship stores, specialty stores and more than 1100 authorized dealers.

If you don't count online sales, the average sales of each store in the third quarter is only more than 40 vehicles. The wide-spread layout is not only inefficient, but also the cost of maintaining such a large-scale sales channel is much higher than that of the domestic market.

Therefore, at this stage, the overseas market for Mavericks Electric is just the icing on the cake, can not provide timely help, in order to reverse the market against the wind, but also rely on the basic market of the Chinese market.

Generally speaking, Mavericks Electric needs to rethink its brand positioning. In the two-wheeled electric car market, there is no way out for blindly pursuing high-end, but how to enter the mainstream requires wisdom.

Specific to the implementation level, under the market background of homogeneous competition, the supply chain and channel management are the foundation to make the optimal solution of the product at a limited cost. The new story about technical barriers and core competence is advanced in the low-tech product logic.

Mavericks Electric did well in its start-up period and should do better in the current predicament.

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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Dongbianxin Research Society (ID:DJXYS-0309), author: Chen Wen

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