"GCL Group" Of Zhu Gongshan Will Never Enter The Automobile Manufacturing Link

On the last day of March, the temperature in Beijing has risen. GCL group hosted a press conference on this day, concerning the strategic transformation of its listed company GCL energy technology.

Earlier, GCL energy branch issued an announcement to "marry" with CICC capital. The two sides intend to establish a long-term strategic cooperative relationship, and initiate the establishment of an industrial fund with the theme of "carbon neutrality" with a total scale of no more than 10 billion yuan to lay out the ecological environment of mobile energy industry.

The capital market responded positively to this, and the shares of GCL Energy Co., Ltd. rose for several days since then, and reached a new high since the backdoor listing.

People familiar with GCL group know that in recent years, the group rarely held large-scale press conferences. In the past few years, GCL has experienced the most difficult time in the company's history. Due to the aggressive expansion rhythm in the past, the group's capital flow is under pressure. Once again, due to the negative impact of the "531 photovoltaic policy" in 2018, the situation of the group at that time was even worse, and it had to go all the way to the end of the asset light road of asset realization.

Once upon a time, Zhu Gongshan also had the idea of retiring, and gradually delivered the new energy "giant ship" built by him for more than ten years to his son Zhu Yufeng. However, after the legal representative and chairman of GCL Group Co., Ltd. was changed to Zhu Yufeng in 2018, he was changed to the Veteran General Wang Dong of GCL last year.

At the same time, Zhu Gongshan began to play more roles. In February this year, Zhu Gongshan joined the board of directors of GCL Energy Technology Co., Ltd. as a director; in the same month, he was once again the chairman of gclsi after two years.

So far, among the board members of the four listed companies of GCL group, in addition to GCL new energy, Zhu Gongshan has been left behind.

Some people say that Zhu Gongshan has started a new business.

"Giant ship" grounded

After attending an industry conference in early March 2021, Zhu Gongshan rushed to Leshan, Sichuan Province to inspect the new polysilicon production base.

Since the granular silicon technology attracted strong attention in the capital market in the fourth quarter of last year, Zhu Gongshan should strike while the iron is hot, and accelerate the commercialization process of poly silicon technology of poly GCL energy.

This is quite dramatic. It originated from thermoelectricity and rose from polysilicon. After 14 years of rotation, Zhu Gongshan has returned to the old polysilicon industry, which seems to have the intention of making a comeback.

In the history of China's new energy development, Zhu Gongshan's name is enough to leave a heavy ink. GCL group, the largest private new energy enterprise in China, was built with disgust. This company has also become one of the few enterprises that have formed a complete closed-loop photovoltaic industrial chain, and has been active in the front-line so far - a vertical integrated industrial chain covering silicon materials, wafers, batteries, modules, system integration, and the development and operation of photovoltaic power stations. It has four A-share and H-share listed companies: poly-gcl energy, GCL new energy, gclsi integration and GCL energy technology.

However, GCL group, which has opened up the whole industrial chain, has become more and more obvious in terms of heavy assets, high asset liability ratio and great test of liquidity.

The negative impact of "531 photovoltaic policy" continues to ferment, and the debt situation of GCL group fell into freezing point in 2018. According to the statistics of 21st century economic report, the total liabilities of three photovoltaic listed companies of the group, namely poly GCL energy, GCL new energy and GCL integration, amounted to 100 billion yuan, with an overall asset liability ratio of about 77%.

Among them, the debt pressure from GCL new energy accounts for half. In 2018, the total debt of GCL new energy was 51.478 billion yuan. By the first half of last year, the figure dropped to 42.686 billion yuan, with a debt ratio of about 80.76%.

"One time when the company held a meeting, I said," I hate the new energy company. " Zhu Gongshan once complained in an interview with the media. Indeed, reviewing GCL's photovoltaic strategic layout and entering the downstream power station field may be a decision he regrets.

2013 is an extremely important year for domestic photovoltaic power station investment. In July of that year, the State Council issued several opinions on promoting the healthy development of photovoltaic industry (GF [2013] No. 24), which set off a wave of private enterprises investing in photovoltaic power stations. GCL group also made efforts in this year. At that time, the group intended to set up a power station investment enterprise controlled by itself to construct, hold and operate the power station. GCL new energy came into being and was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2014.

Financial subsidies are the biggest driving force behind private enterprises' investment in photovoltaic power stations. However, the subsidy "brake" will come in 2018. The "531 photovoltaic policy" of that year uniformly lowered the benchmark grid price of photovoltaic, and reduced the total amount of new PV installed with subsidy policy.

Under the sharp increase of liquidity risk, Zhu Gongshan led GCL group to start subtraction. This year, GCL group also once had an important personnel change, which triggered speculation about whether Zhu Gongshan would hand over his son. Half a year after the promulgation of "531 photovoltaic policy", the legal representative of GCL Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as GCL Co., Ltd.) changed, and Zhu Yufeng took over the post of chairman.

In terms of the huge and complex organizational relationship of GCL group, the limited change of GCL's commander-in-chief was not the same as that of the whole group, which caused confusion at that time. The 21st century economic reporter learned that Zhu Yufeng was not in charge of all the business of the group at that time, but mainly responsible for the power sector.

In fact, GCL group, which is bigger and stronger with polysilicon, has ushered in a watershed in the industry at the technical level of back-end links.

From polycrystalline silicon to silicon wafers, batteries and components, GCL group encountered the intensified competition of monocrystal and polycrystalline in 2016. A few years ago, the mainstream technology of silicon chip in domestic photovoltaic industry was polycrystalline silicon chip. Compared with single crystal silicon chip, polycrystalline silicon chip has the advantages of low cost and relatively high cost performance. Zhu Gongshan's title of "world silicon king" is also due to polysilicon materials and silicon wafers. Poly GCL energy, a listed company of the group, has occupied the largest market share in the production and sales of polysilicon materials and polysilicon chips for several years.

The monocrystalline silicon chip camp represented by Longji shares launched a challenge to the polycrystalline camp in 2016. At the SNEC exhibition in May 2016, Longji Co., Ltd. made a commitment to follow the price difference of 0.6 yuan for polycrystalline silicon wafers, which promoted the increase of single crystal market share. Subsequently, with the continuous improvement of monocrystalline silicon technology, the production cost has been greatly reduced. By the end of 2020, the proportion of single crystal has been in absolute advantage.

GCL group is not without crisis consciousness. When the monocrystal is coming, the group is unable to leave immediately because of its high investment in production equipment and technology in polycrystalline technology. Under the trade-off, GCL group pushed the quasi single crystal technology to the front of the stage, combining the single crystal battery production technology with the polycrystalline ingot casting technology for transition. But the effect is not ideal.

Lao Zhu's "re entrepreneurship"

Attention to the stock investment of GCL group's listed companies is used to call Zhu Gongshan as "Lao Zhu". He himself also used the term many times in an interview with the media.

At present, the main task of GCL group is to reduce debt. However, the GCL group in Zhu Gongshan's eyes cannot but be forward-looking.

After the personnel change of GCL limited in 2018, Zhu Gongshan did not stop. Not to mention that it is impossible to withdraw from the sea without success, the new energy "giant ship" of GCL group still needs to go to sea again after grounding. Therefore, on the one hand, Zhu Gongshan visited the industry to find a buyer in order to sell his assets smoothly; on the other hand, he wanted to think about the future development of the group and regain the competitiveness of GCL group.

Now, Zhu Gongshan is more busy. "It's basically running outside." An insider of GCL group commented on Zhu Gongshan's recent state to the 21st century economic reporter.

Behind the busy situation, GCL group seems to have made clear the following main business layout: re intensive cultivation in the photovoltaic material end and layout of the mobile energy industry chain.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, the share price of poly GCL energy began to change. After soaring 278% in a single quarter, the company's share price continued to hit a new high this year, reaching HK $3.88 at one time. "Poly GCL energy's recent sharp rise is due to some positive information. The company's FBR granular silicon project has met the technical conditions for large-scale production." Such comments were made by bocom international and other institutions at that time.

Zhu Gongshan also confirmed to the 21st century economic reporter that the core of GCL group's intensive cultivation of photovoltaic materials is granular silicon technology.

At present, the improved Siemens process is the main process of polysilicon manufacturing. However, under this process, power, raw materials and depreciation are the main production costs, so the exploration space is limited. It is expected that the process cost can be greatly reduced and the utilization rate of raw materials can be improved by using FBR.

But there are also controversies about granular silicon. "Whether the silicon hopping, dust and quality can be continuously improved is a problem that needs to be solved continuously in terms of technology at present." Some industry insiders told the reporter of the 21st century economic report that the most important problem for commercialization of granular silicon technology is cost.

Despite the controversy, the ripples have spread. In the first ten days of March this year, A-share photovoltaic plate ushered in a callback, and the polysilicon material competitor Tongwei shares also fell sharply. The coming of granular silicon technology has affected the mood of secondary market to a certain extent.

GCL hopes to speed up the pace. On February 28 this year, poly GCL energy released two announcements on the expansion of granular silicon production, announcing that it has made significant substantial progress in the expansion of granular silicon production in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia. This is also the main reason why Zhu Gongshan rushed to Leshan, Sichuan Province for inspection in early March.

According to the announcement, Leshan Sumin, a subsidiary of poly GCL energy, has successfully introduced strategic investors as the main body of the construction of Sichuan Leshan granular silicon project (phase I 60000 tons), and has obtained the full support of Leshan Municipal government. In addition, Jiangsu Zhongneng, another subsidiary, has signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Shanghai CNC, a listed company of a shares, and plans to establish a joint venture to jointly invest in the construction of 300000 tons of granular silicon project in Inner Mongolia, with an estimated total investment of 18 billion yuan.

Another good news is that poly GCL energy has successively obtained 10 billion purchase orders from China Central and Longji, which also provides key customer protection for the continuous supply of granular silicon.

Zhu Gongshan, who has regained the spotlight of photovoltaic materials, began to revitalize GCL group's another listing entity ignored by the capital market: GCL energy technology.

The A-share company listed on the back door in 2019 is the main carrier of GCL group's clean energy assets, with a business structure of 80% natural gas and cogeneration power generation, as well as a small amount of wind power generation. Looking at the performance of GCL energy technology since its listing, it has shown a steady growth trend. But capital markets seem to pay little attention to the company, and its share price is flat.

In Zhu Gongshan's opinion, the value of GCL energy technology is obviously underestimated. The company that can produce green power needs to break the stereotype that it is only a power generation enterprise. Therefore, Zhu Gongshan found a new position for it.

On March 21, GCL energy technology released a number of announcements. The important information can be summarized as: new scope, new cooperation and new planning.

The new scope refers to that GCL energy technology has changed its business scope and added new energy vehicle charging / changing equipment and system integration, new energy vehicle charging / changing facilities construction and operation services, etc.; new cooperation means that the company and CICC capital carry out strategic cooperation, and plan to jointly initiate the establishment of an industrial fund with a total scale of no more than 10 billion yuan with the theme of "carbon neutrality" to march into mobile energy The new plan refers to that the company has announced the development plan of electric vehicle electricity exchange business. The target areas of electricity exchange business include passenger cars represented by taxis and online car hailing, focusing on the Yangtze River Delta, Dawan District, Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Chengdu Chongqing and other regions.

On March 31, in an interview with the 21st century economic reporter, Zhu Gongshan joked, "GCL has entered the automotive field.". However, he was very clear that GCL would never enter the auto manufacturing sector in the future.

Of course, the business model of electric vehicle swapping business needs to be further clarified. Battery technology and investment cost, safety and responsibility definition, and power exchange network laying are unavoidable problems.

With the support of capital, Zhu Gongshan is confident of his "re entrepreneurship".

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