By
Svetlana Soroka
April 18th, 2024
WM Motor claimed it focuses only on the mainstream market, and that its low-priced vehicles are a catch considering their quality and performance.
WM Motor Holdings Ltd, also known as Weltmeister, one of China’s fast-growing electric vehicle startups has filed to go public in Hong Kong through the Initial Public Offering (IPO) route. The startup claimed to have quite a lot to be proud of in terms of its business performance, further complementing its move to go public.
According to the filing, China’s WM Motor said it delivered 44,152 units in 2021, a figure that is more than double its total sales and deliveries in 2020. While this depicts its growth within this time span, the company said it maintains a very good ranking when it comes to pure-play EV makers across mainland China.
The Chinese EV market is the largest in the world and the major target for all global electric vehicle makers including America’s Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA). However, WM Motor occupies a lower trophic level in the food chain with competitors Xpeng Inc (NYSE: XPEV) and Nio Inc (NYSE: NIO) recording much better sales numbers. As of December, WM Motor said it has sold just about 83,495 since it launched its first model back in 2018.
The duo of Xpeng and Nio also introduced their first EV car models around the same time and in comparison, Xpeng has delivered 137,953 vehicles in total while Nio’s cumulative deliveries totaled 167,070 with a year advantage relative to when the other two launched their products.
As it heads into the public market, Weltmeister said its annual losses over the past three years have doubled, coming in at 8.2 billion yuan ($1.2 billion). Impressively, the company’s revenue soared by 170% to 4.7 billion yuan in 2021, a growth rate that may stir a massive turnaround if sustained over the course of the next few fiscal years.
China’s WM Motor Business Advantages
The EV world is a very competitive one and in order to survive or gain a fair market share as the industry advances, firms must also exhibit a good advantage across the board.
Weltmeister outlined its core business advantages to be hinged on its proactive research and development efforts as well as on the fact that it owns the facilities it manufactures its vehicles. WM Motor also claimed it focuses only on the mainstream market, and that its low-priced vehicles are a catch considering their quality and performance.
WM Motor revealed that it spends as much as 20.7% of its revenue on research and development, a figure that surpasses the 19.6% of the revenue spent on such research by its rival, Xpeng.
The company has a total of 3,952, of which a total of 1,141 or 28.9% work in research and development. China’s WM Motor revealed that a total of 54.1% of its employees work in manufacturing.