Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1795
Ideal ranks among the most efficient car companies in the world
In the case of expanding travel radius and limited energy replenishment efficiency, mileage anxiety has risen instead of falling. This has led to a continuous increase in the sales of plug-in hybrids and extended-range vehicles in China this year. The proportion of new energy vehicles in the first half of the year reached 32.24% %, an increase of nearly ten percentage points year-on-year. The well-rounded and single-minded ideal seizes on this momentum.
During the Chinese-English translation of colleagues’ financial report meeting, Li Xiang, chairman of Ideal Auto, posted a strip chart on Weibo:
Li Xiang posted a Weibo 12 minutes after the start of the performance meeting, sharing his most important task in 2023-no “brand”.
Someone in the comments told him to focus on the meeting (the online meeting had a technical glitch shortly afterwards). Based on the achievements of leading the team in the past six months, it is estimated that there will not be much opposition to what he says or does.
- The revenue in the second quarter was 28.65 billion yuan, a quarter-on-quarter increase for four consecutive quarters. Among them, the vehicle sales revenue was 27.971 billion yuan, and the gross profit was 5.887 billion yuan.
- In the second quarter, the gross profit margin of auto sales was 21%, surpassing Tesla for the second consecutive quarter.
- The free cash flow in the second quarter was nearly 10 billion yuan, and the cash and short-term investment at the end of the quarter exceeded 72.2 billion yuan. On August 8, the closing market value was HK$370 billion.
The average selling price (ASP, sales revenue/delivery volume, including tax) of ideal cars in the quarter was about 365,200 yuan, a decrease of about 28,000 yuan from the previous quarter. It is related to 358,000 yuan) and the clearance of the previous generation model ONE.
The number of quarterly new car deliveries stopped at 86,533 (monthly average of 28,844). Chief Engineer Ma Donghui mentioned capacity bottlenecks, especially on the parts supply side. He said that in the second quarter, he formulated a strategy and plan for increasing production capacity, and believed that new production capacity would be released soon, but the component production line and packaging are still being debugged and verified, and it still takes time to prepare.
Li Xiang said that starting from July 18, the continuous weekly delivery volume should be stable at 8,000 vehicles, and that as much as it is produced, it will be delivered. At present, the only bottleneck is production capacity, and there is no solution this quarter. At the performance meeting, Li Xiang said that at the beginning of the year, he set an annual delivery target of 360,000 vehicles. Considering the economic situation and the growth stagnation period that usually occurs after corporate organization adjustments in the past, he lowered the annual delivery target to 300,000 vehicles. The company expects to deliver at least 100,000 vehicles in the third quarter, and hit the monthly delivery target of 40,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter.
When asked by analysts how to get out of the comfort zone (large family car market above 300,000 yuan) and remain competitive in the fiercely competitive range of 200,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan, Li Xiang said that he is very confident about the comprehensive product strength of L6. Confidence, it will become the model with the highest monthly sales in the L series.
For the release of MPV MEGA at the end of the year, he reiterated that the sales target is more than 500,000 yuan in the market (regardless of model, driving form), and he firmly believes in the range-extending technology with large batteries and high-efficiency range-extending technology as the core, and the real solution to slow charging speed. With the high-voltage pure electric technology that is difficult to charge for long distances, the two routes in parallel are the best solution for large-scale replacement of fuel vehicles. (Gong Fangyi)
In the first half of the year, the average lottery ticket bought by each person in China was 194 yuan, a record
According to the data released by the Ministry of Finance, in the first half of this year, a total of 273.899 billion yuan of lottery tickets were sold nationwide, a year-on-year increase of 50.4%. In terms of regions, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu sold the most lottery tickets of 27.78 billion, 21.74 billion, and 21.57 billion yuan respectively.
“Wandian Finance” further calculated the per capita lottery purchase expenditure of each province based on the permanent resident population in 2022. The results showed that in the first half of this year, residents of Beijing, Zhejiang and Tianjin bought the most lottery tickets, with per capita expenditures reaching 332 yuan, 331 yuan and 328 yuan respectively. Residents in Guangxi are the least interested in lottery tickets, and their per capita consumption does not exceed 100 yuan. Overall, in the first half of this year, the average Chinese spent 194 yuan on lottery tickets, 1.5 times that of the same period in 2019, and a record high.
Since 2011, China’s per capita lottery spending has been growing steadily almost every year. In the first half of 2011, it was only 75 yuan. By the middle of 2018, it had doubled to 176 yuan. In August of that year, 12 ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Finance, jointly issued an announcement to once again explicitly prohibit the sale of Internet lottery tickets. Afterwards, various departments and places launched rectification actions against illegal Internet lottery sales. So far, all legal lottery sales in China have come from offline operations.
Then, during the COVID-19 epidemic, offline passenger flow decreased and greatly affected lottery sales. In the most serious first half of 2020, China’s per capita lottery expenditure was only 88.5 yuan, which was almost pulled back to ten years ago.
A research report from Guolian Securities pointed out that overall, lottery is still a consumer industry that conforms to the economic cycle. Historically, lottery sales in China, the United States, and Japan have shown pro-cyclical properties, that is, during most periods of high GDP growth, lottery sales have also grown faster, and vice versa.
The particularity of the sharp recovery of China’s lottery industry in the first half of this year is that the epidemic has greatly affected offline passenger flow in the past few years. This is another industry that completely relies on offline channel sales, resulting in a low lottery sales base. In addition, a number of large-scale mainstream events this year have also driven the growth of sports lottery sales. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, in the first half of the year, the sales growth rate of sports lotteries, especially guessing sports lotteries, has reached 110%, which is significantly faster than that of welfare lotteries and lotto. lottery.
But that still doesn’t fully explain why the lottery industry has recovered so quickly, outpacing other consumer industries.
We have noticed that instant lottery tickets (that is, “scratch games”) that belong to “instant carpe diem” have been growing against the trend in recent years. From 2019 to 2022, the average annual growth rate of instant lottery tickets will reach 27.5%. Even in 2020, when the epidemic is most severely affected and the annual sales of the entire lottery industry decline by more than 20%, the sales of “scratch games” will still increase 3%.
Unlike “old lottery players” who like to buy lottery tickets (two-color balls, etc.), many young people start to get in touch with lottery tickets from the “scratch lottery” with a stronger sense of participation and instant redemption. Compared with catering, daily chemicals, etc., lottery tickets are not a necessity in life. However, more and more young people are willing to enter lottery stations or self-service lottery machines, spend 5 yuan, 10 yuan, 20 yuan, and have a “dream of getting rich” that will be announced in 20 seconds and has a high probability of failing.
Huang Zhenxing, a professor at the School of Economics at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said in an interview with Caijing that the consumption of lottery tickets is still increasing even though it is clearly known that buying lottery tickets is an investment with negative returns. It is decreasing, so they are more willing to “gamble” through the lottery to see if they can get rich overnight by luck, which also means that people have insufficient confidence in the current economy.
Wei Zhou, a well-known author and book reviewer, wrote that the lottery “get rich” seems to promise an easy solution to young people, even if the probability of its realization is very low. In doing so, they get a cheap break in a vagaries and insecurity of everyday life.
In 2015, South Korea suffered from the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic. The pillar of the national economy – exports also experienced negative growth for more than a year. Due to internal and external difficulties, South Korea’s lottery sales hit a new high of nearly 3 billion US dollars in more than ten years. Lee Seung-hyup, a professor of sociology at Daegu University, expressed a similar view in an interview with the media: “Once people think that they cannot find an exit in the blank reality, they will pin their hopes on the lottery.” (Qiu Hao)
How did the best July box office in movie history come about?
In July of this year, the film market heated up. Big-budget films achieved high box office as scheduled, and their waists were surging. About 212 million people entered the theater that month, contributing a total box office of 8.717 billion yuan, the highest in film history for the same period.
Although only 37 new films were released, 17 less than the same period last year, there are four films with a box office of more than one billion in a single month. They are “In the Octagonal Cage” for 1.925 billion yuan, “The Missing She” for 1.801 billion yuan, “Three Thousand Miles of Chang’an” for 1.536 billion yuan, and “The First Part of Fengshen” for 1.184 billion yuan.
“In the Octagonal Cage” is Wang Baoqiang’s new director’s new work released after six years. It focuses on social reality, tells the story of the protagonist Xiang Tenghui leading the children out of the mountains through learning and fighting, and conveys a positive attitude towards life through the sorrows and joys of small people.
According to the satisfaction survey of Chinese film audiences released by the China Film Art Research Center and Entrepreneur, “In the Octagonal Cage” is 4 points higher than the director’s last film “Havoc in Tianzhu” in terms of ideology, appreciation, and communication. Above, the progress is obvious. In terms of marketing, “In the Octagonal Cage” seized the opportunity and achieved a box office of 400 million before it was released through a rare large-scale, early-to-night advance screening.
The suspense film “She Who Disappeared”, which was adapted from the “Thai Wife Murder Case” and the Soviet film “The Trap for Bachelors”, also reflected the social reality. Human empathy——In the June-July survey of Chinese movie audiences’ satisfaction with new films, it scored 83.8 points, ranking fourth.
The satisfaction ranks first (85.1 points) is “Three Thousand Miles of Chang’an” produced by Chasing Light Animation, which presents the epic history and magnificent picture scroll of the Tang Dynasty based on the friendship between poet Li Bai and Gao Shi. The satisfaction ranks first in Chasing Light The first of the animated “New Culture” series of animated films. In terms of subdivision, in the evaluation of professional audiences, 10 of the 12 indicators were the highest in the same period. Among them, the communication method scored 100 points, and the visual effect, creative novelty, and positive and healthy values all exceeded 86 points.
Combining traditional culture with animation production, as long as the production level is acceptable, most of the box office has not been bad in recent years. As of now, the lowest box office of the top 30 animation film history in mainland China has reached 450 million box office. In 2019, “Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World” also broke the box office record of Chinese film history’s summer film schedule with a box office of 5.035 billion.
“Fengshen Trilogy” is director Wu Ershan’s new work eight years after “Looking for the Dragon”, and it has been ten years since it was launched in 2013. The so-called total investment of 3 billion yuan, the “Chaoge” city built on 500 acres of seaside open space in Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis, the 18-month shooting cycle, and more than 8,000 staff members successively advertised that it is A blockbuster production. The box office in the first week was 369 million yuan, and the investment of up to 600 million yuan in publicity and distribution helped the film go low and go high. As of today, the cumulative box office of “Fengshen Part I” reached 1.73 billion yuan.
Surprisingly, the comedy “Super Family”, which was highly anticipated due to the brand effect of Happy Twist and the label star Shen Teng, only scored 4.1 on Douban and withdrew from the competition in the first weekend. Netizens commented that the plot is illogical, the jokes are old-fashioned, and the performance is exaggerated. Opening high and moving low, the monthly box office performance was only 290 million yuan, accounting for 3.3%.
In terms of imported films, “Mission: Impossible 7: Deadly Reckoning (Part 1)”, which scored 7.8 on Douban, earned 330 million yuan at the box office that month, accounting for 3.8%; the highly topical “Barbie” earned 189 million yuan at the box office, accounting for 2.2%. Some analysts believe that this reflects the loss of domestic appeal of imported films. In addition, in the early days of “Barbie”‘s release, there were a large number of Mandarin-language versions of the film for unknown reasons, which made it miss the golden period of box office growth. (Intern Chen Yutong)
The CFO who helped Tesla achieve rapid growth leaves
Tesla Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn (Zachary Kirkhorn) resigned on August 4. He will leave Tesla after 13 years of work before the end of this year. Tesla Chief Accounting Officer Vaibhav Taneja will take over as CFO.
When Zach Kirkhorn took over as CFO in 2019, Tesla’s operating cash flow began to turn positive. But the job is not easy.
At the beginning of 2019, Tesla’s future growth center Shanghai factory is still just a beach, and the explosive model Model Y has not yet been delivered. Tesla has only just come out of “capacity hell”, and it needs huge capital expenditures to build factories in Europe and China. Tesla has borrowed money to secure growth, which has left Tesla heavily indebted, reaching $12 billion at the end of 2018.
When the Shanghai factory was put into production, the new crown epidemic began to impact the automotive supply chain, and Tesla could not buy enough and good parts at a cheap price as before. At that time, Tesla was still building two new cars in the United States and Germany. Gigafactory.
At the same time, Zach Kirkhorn is also facing an uncertain situation. When he rises, he will announce on social media that he will privatize Tesla’s CEO, Musk. This is a problem for all CFOs. Musk did not ultimately privatize Tesla, but he sold a large number of Tesla shares to acquire Twitter last year, which caused Tesla’s stock price to fall by 35%, and its market value evaporated by more than 400 billion U.S. dollars.
Amidst these challenges, Kirkhorn has performed his role as CFO well. Since he took office, Tesla has had 15 consecutive profitable quarters, amassed $22 billion in cash and paid down $10.7 billion in debt. During this period, Tesla’s car gross profit margin continued to remain at around 25%, much higher than that of companies such as GM and Ford. When he took over as CFO in 2019, Tesla’s market value was $50 billion, and now it is $798 billion.
In addition to the duties of CFO, he also participated in building a more efficient supply chain and super factory to reduce the production cost of Model 3 and Model Y. Now, Tesla has five Gigafactories capable of producing more than 2.4 million vehicles a year.
Kirkhorn’s colleagues credit his success with firm and sound management moves and his ability to communicate with Musk.
When Kirkhorn left, Tesla was building a new factory in Mexico and preparing to bring more cheap models to market, fending off rivals in an increasingly crowded electric vehicle market. Tesla’s gross margin also fell to 19% from a peak of 32%.
Losing a competent CFO at such a critical juncture will bring more uncertainty to Tesla. (Li Zinan)
OTHER NEWS
The State Cyberspace Administration of China began to solicit opinions on the application of face recognition technology on August 8.
On August 8, the State Internet Information Office publicly solicited opinions on the “Regulations on the Safety Management of Face Recognition Technology Application (Trial) (Draft for Comment)”. It is mentioned that building managers such as property service companies shall not use face recognition technology to verify personal identity as the only way to enter and exit property management areas. If individuals do not agree to use face information for identity verification, property service companies and other building management The person shall provide other reasonable and convenient identity verification methods.
China’s July exports fell 14.5% year-on-year in US dollar terms.
According to the General Administration of Customs, denominated in US dollars, China’s export value in July this year fell by 14.5% year-on-year, and exports to ASEAN, Europe, the United States and Japan all declined. In the first seven months of this year, China’s export value fell by 5% year-on-year, and the decline was larger than the previous value. Among major regions, exports to countries along the “Belt and Road” increased by nearly 10%, while exports to the United States fell by more than 10%. Automobile exports have maintained a growth rate of more than double.
Xingji Meizu terminated self-developed chips.
On August 8, some media revealed that Xingji Meizu Group’s chip research institute plans to abolish all fresh graduates, leaving some old employees, and the compensation plan is being negotiated. There are about 200 employees in this department, and there are more than 40 fresh graduates joining this year. In this regard, Xingji Meizu responded that this move is to terminate the self-developed chip business, and it is a strategic adjustment made in response to changes in the global economic market and long-term development challenges, involving the optimization and adjustment of personnel.
Country Garden denied that the delivery of new houses was overdue, and it is expected to deliver 700,000 houses this year.
On August 8, relevant people from Country Garden stated that since 2021, the industry has continued to slump, and multiple unfavorable factors have superimposed, resulting in continuous decline in industry sales, failure of open market financing, and the industry has entered an unprecedented difficult period. The company has been sticking to it, but it is difficult. Yan Shuguang. However, Country Garden has always insisted on fulfilling its social responsibilities, and made every effort to ensure the delivery, delivery, and safety. There is no overdue delivery situation, and the company expects to deliver 700,000 houses this year.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on the filing of mobile Internet applications.
Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “Notice of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Carrying out the Filing of Mobile Internet Applications” (hereinafter referred to as the “Notice”). The “Notice” pointed out that with the rapid development of the mobile Internet, App has become an important carrier of Internet information services. Apps and websites belong to the provision of Internet information services. They should be filed with the telecommunications authority in accordance with the requirements of national laws and regulations by referring to the method of website filing. Procedures, registration of real name, network resources and business information.
McDonald’s China said it will “sprint to 10,000 stores” in five years.
Recently, Golden Arch Times, the Chinese operator of McDonald’s, stated that by 2028, McDonald’s China will sprint to reach more than 10,000 restaurants in the first-tier to fifth-tier cities, and the growth space in high-tier cities is still very large. The plan of opening stores in China and the plan of double-digit growth in turnover have all been achieved. In 2017, CITIC, CITIC Capital and Carlyle Group jointly acquired 80% of the shares of McDonald’s China, and since then McDonald’s has opened the golden arch era of localized operations.
Employees who were more affected by the disaster in Beijing can withdraw the provident fund in full.
The Beijing Housing Provident Fund Management Center issued a notice on the 7th that employees who have been greatly affected by the disaster and urgently need large-scale capital expenditures can withdraw the full amount of the housing provident fund balance in their accounts to cope with temporary living difficulties. According to the notice, the measure will continue until December 31 this year, and the scope of application includes enterprises and employees who are affected by rain and flood disasters and have difficulties in making deposits, as well as frontline rescuers, water workers, and grassroots cadres affected by the disaster. .
The chain catering industry has recovered collectively, and Xiabuxiabu has forecast a turnaround in the first half of the year.
Xiabuxiabu expects its revenue to increase by 32% year-on-year to 2.85 billion yuan in the first half of the year, with a net profit of not less than 2 million yuan, compared with a loss of 280 million yuan in the same period last year. The performance improvement was due to the increase in customer flow, improved operation, and the number of stores increased by 8.5% YoY to 1094. Looking at the first half of the year alone, Xiabuxiabu added a net 68 stores, which is still far from the goal of opening 230 new stores for the whole year. Earlier, Haidilao also predicted a profit of 2.2 billion yuan in the first half of the year, and its revenue increased by at least 23.7%.
The popularity of high-end travel continued unabated, and the revenue of Mandarin Oriental Hotel increased by 30% in the first half of the year.
In the first half of this year, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s revenue increased by 30% year-on-year to US$260.7 billion, with a basic profit of US$28 million, more than double that of 2019. Among them, the occupancy rate in Europe and the Middle East hit a new high, and the business in Hong Kong, China is still gradually recovering. However, due to the decline in the valuation of the Causeway Bay land in Hong Kong in the past year, the group suffered a fair value loss of US$140 million in the first half of the year, and the net loss expanded to US$69.2 million year-on-year.
The value of Softbank’s stake in Ali fell to 20 billion yen (1 billion yuan).
Softbank’s unexpected loss of 477.6 billion yen (about 3.3 billion U.S. dollars) in the second quarter of this year was a loss for three consecutive quarters. Thanks to the rebound in global technology stocks, its vision fund department recorded an investment income of 160 billion yen, ending five consecutive quarters loss. During the period, the unrealized valuation loss of Ali’s holdings was 553.4 billion yen (about 3.8 billion U.S. dollars), and the value of Ali’s shares held by Softbank dropped to about 20 billion yen (about 140 million U.S. dollars) at the end of the period. The quarter was down 690 billion yen. At the peak, Softbank’s stake in Ali was worth over US$200 billion.
Chip design company Arm plans to go public in September, and Apple, Samsung, and Nvidia are interested in investing.
According to media reports, Arm, a British chip design company owned by Softbank, plans to list on Nasdaq in September, with a valuation of over US$60 billion, which will be the world’s largest IPO this year. According to reports, Apple, Samsung, Nvidia, Intel, etc. plan to invest in Arm immediately after it goes public, and the advantage is that it can influence its decision-making. And Arm also hopes to allow these large companies to hold shares to stabilize stock prices. SoftBank and its Vision Fund currently hold all of Arm’s shares.
Disney set up a task force to study how to apply AI.
According to media reports, long before the Hollywood strike, Disney had set up a special task force to study AI and its application in business. Disney currently has 11 AI-related jobs being recruited, involving animation studios, theme parks, TV commercial team and more. People familiar with the matter said that Disney intends to use AI to reduce the cost of film and television production, create virtual characters in theme parks that can communicate with tourists, and so on.
Zoom updated its terms of service to allow the company to use some customer data to train its artificial intelligence.
Recently, the video conferencing platform Zoom has made changes to its terms of service. Zoom can use specific user data to train its artificial intelligence, but it does not use audio, video or chat content data without customer consent. The update comes amid heightened debate over the extent to which personal data for AI services should be used for training, and the field of generative AI has seen a number of lawsuits in recent months from authors or artists who say that in the output of AI tools I saw my own work.
PayPal launched stable currency payment.
Fintech firm PayPal launched a new stablecoin called PayPal Dollar (PYUSD) on Aug. 7. The new stablecoin is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term Treasury bills, and similar cash equivalents, and can be exchanged for U.S. dollars at any time for transfers, spending, and other cryptocurrencies on PayPal. As early as 2020, PayPal allowed users to buy, sell and hold digital currencies such as Bitcoin through its online wallet.
A subsidiary of Ant Group sold a 10.3% stake in India’s “Alipay” Paytm.
According to reports, Paytm will buy a 10.3% stake in India’s “Alipay” Paytm from Antfin, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant Group, through its overseas wholly-owned subsidiary Resilient. The deal will be worth an estimated $628 million at Paytm’s current market price. Antfin is Paytm’s largest shareholder, holding a 23.8% stake in the latter. After the transaction is completed, Antfin’s shareholding ratio will drop to 13.5%, while Paytm founder and CEO Sharma will directly and indirectly hold 19.42% of Paytm’s shares.
The FTC is suing Amazon for the countdown to a final “ceremonial” meeting between the two parties.
Next week, Amazon will meet individually with each member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to discuss a possible FTC antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. The lawsuit will focus on Amazon’s core e-commerce business, the online marketplace, or third-party merchants, which now account for more than half of Amazon’s online sales, the people familiar with the matter said. The FTC has been investigating the case for several years. As early as 2019 during the Trump period, the FTC began antitrust investigations into Amazon’s retail and cloud computing businesses.
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