Tencent-backed Evergrande New Electric Vehicle (HKEX: 0708) reported USD 2.4 billion in revenue for 2020, up 175% year-on-year, while losses doubled to USD 1.19 billion, according to the company’s latest earnings report.
To take advantage of China’s booming new energy mobility industry, real estate conglomerate Evergrande rebranded its listed health subsidiary as Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group in August 2020. So far, the company has poured more than USD 7.3 billion into EV manufacturing, chairman Xiao En said during the earnings call, Sina reported.
The real estate affiliate has the vision to become the world’s leading EV manufacturer. It “aims to produce and sell at least 1 million EVs annually by 2025, and by 2035, produce and sell at least 5 million EVs annually,” reads the company’s official website. So far, it has sold zero cars to the general public.
Meanwhile, Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) delivered 499,550 cars in 2020. Nio (NYSE: NIO), a Chinese EV startup, sold 43,728 vehicles.
Evergrande NEV plans to bring multiple factories around the world online between 2021 and 2025. Each will have an annual production capacity of 100,000 vehicles in the first phase, says the company’s website.
Even though Evergrande NEV is years behind several peers in China, investors remain optimistic about the company’s prospects: it has bagged a total of USD 4.5 billion in two rounds of fundraising since September 2020. Its share price has been rising steadily since September last year.
“The only thing missing for Evergrande New Electric Vehicle right now is the vehicle,” one reader commented under news about the group’s target sales.
Cars that run on batteries are a new frontier for enterprises, brands, and factories of all shapes and sizes. IoT and smartphone brand Xiaomi might be joining the fray by utilizing a local car maker’s factory, Reuters reported. (However, the deputy director of Xiaomi, Xu Jie, denied this.) And iPhone assembler Foxconn is in talks with Vingroup in Vietnam about supplying components for electric cars.
Watch this: Video | Will real estate giant Evergrande succeed in the EV industry?
This article is part of KrASIA’s “Key Stat” series, where KrASIA picks and presents the most significant figures of the day’s technology and business world.