Expand the company's influence in the field of new energy vehicles listed companies acquire lithium equipment enterprises

On the evening of December 22nd, 688529.SH announced that the company intends to buy 100% of Xinpu Automation held by eight trading parties, including Mao Tiejun and Tang Qianjun. After the completion of this transaction, Xinpu Automation will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the listed company.

At the same time, the company plans to issue shares to no more than 35 specific objects to raise supporting funds, and the total amount of supporting funds raised shall not exceed 100% of the transaction price of the company's assets purchased by issuing shares in this transaction, and the number of shares issued shall not exceed 30% of the total share capital of the company before this transaction.

According to the data, Hausen Co., Ltd. is an integrated supplier of intelligent production line and intelligent equipment, mainly engaged in intelligent production line planning, research and development, design, assembly, debugging integration, sales, service and turnkey engineering. At present, the company's main business is focused on the automotive industry, covering new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles.

In the field of new energy vehicles, Hausen products mainly include hybrid transmission intelligent assembly line, power lithium battery intelligent production line, hydrogen fuel cell intelligent production line and new energy vehicle drive motor intelligent production line and so on.

On November 9, 2020, Hausen shares were officially listed and traded in Science and Technology Innovation Board. Up to now, Hausen shares have been listed for one year.

This epitaxial merger and acquisition is a reasonable and inevitable choice for Hausen to rapidly expand its technology and product layout in power lithium battery intelligent manufacturing equipment, make up for its shortcomings and achieve the strategic goal of constantly developing new business of high-end equipment.

Xinpu Automation, the target company, is mainly engaged in the design, research, development, production and sales of intelligent manufacturing equipment and post-processing production lines for lithium batteries. The products are mainly used in the manufacturing fields of lithium batteries such as power batteries, 3C batteries and energy storage batteries.

At present, Xinpu Automation has entered the supply chain system of a number of well-known companies at home and abroad, and has established cooperative relations with large lithium battery manufacturers such as Japan's Sony (now Japan's Murata), South Korea's PNE, LG Chemical, BYD, Chaowei Group, Camel New Energy, Paron Technology and Ganfeng Lithium Industry.

Hausen said that there is a strong synergy between the company and Xinpu Automation. After the completion of the merger and acquisition, it can improve the company's profitability, improve the company's product types, expand its influence in the field of new energy vehicles, and improve its ability to provide customers with solutions.

However, expectations are often good, and Hausen shares also spoke frankly about the risks of mergers and acquisitions.

In terms of asset-liability ratio, from 2019 to 2020 and from January to September 2021, the asset-liability ratio of Xinpu Automation was 103.38%, 99.10% and 93.65% respectively, higher than the average level of comparable listed companies in the same industry. In addition to its own funds, the insufficient funds of Xinpu Automation production and operation mainly rely on the commercial credit of upstream and downstream enterprises, resulting in a high level of asset-liability ratio facing potential financial risks.

In addition, there are still some pending lawsuits in Xinpu Automation.

It is worth mentioning that as early as November 2015, A-share listed company Yinghe Technology acquired a 60% stake in Xinpu Automation. However, in April 2018, Yinghe Technology transferred its stake at a price of 96 million yuan. Whether the reason is due to Xinpu Automation performance fulfillment related factors is not known, but less than three years of performance commitment period, win and technology choose to change hands, the meaning is self-evident.

Of course, Hausen's acquisition of Xinpu Automation is just a microcosm of the booming lithium equipment market.

In recent years, the rapid growth of end markets such as new energy vehicles has accelerated the expansion of the upstream lithium battery industry and correspondingly led to the market demand for lithium battery equipment.

It is estimated that the expansion of 1GWh lithium battery capacity, the import of new equipment and the degree of automation greatly determine the capital investment: it takes at least 300 million yuan to use domestic equipment and 900 million yuan to import fully automatic equipment.

In other words, if the lithium battery industry enters the TWh era in the next five years, the new capacity will bring great incremental demand to the lithium battery equipment market.

Vike Lithium noted that from January to August 2021 alone, battery manufacturers such as Ningde Times, BYD, AVIC Lithium, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Funeng Technology, and Honeycomb Energy have announced orders for lithium power equipment of about 24.4 billion yuan, far exceeding the 8.6 billion yuan for the whole of last year!

In the future, in terms of market scale, take the new lithium power production capacity as an example, according to statistics, 21 enterprises, including Ningde Times, LG New Energy, AVIC Lithium Power, Yiwei Lithium Energy, SKI, BYD, and so on, have reached 3155GWH, which will exceed the 2700GWh capacity by the end of 2020.

Based solely on the incremental production capacity of 2700GWh, and taking the median funds for lithium power equipment per GWh (between 300 million yuan and 900 million yuan) 600 million yuan, the demand for lithium power equipment will reach 2700GWh600 million yuan = 1.62 trillion yuan!

From the perspective of market development, compared with foreign manufacturers, in the field of front equipment, high-end equipment is still dominated by overseas manufacturers, and there is still a certain gap between the efficiency, accuracy and stability of domestic equipment and the advanced level of foreign countries. for example, the coating machine with the highest value in the front section. In the field of equipment in the middle and later stage, China has broken the monopoly situation between Japan and South Korea, basically completed import substitution, the localization rate has reached more than 90%, and the technical indicators and comprehensive performance of winding, welding, liquid injection, chemical composition and testing equipment have reached the international advanced level.