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| Energy storage, IPOs are coming |
| Release time:2023-02-16 14:24:43| Viewed： |
Shenzhen energy storage unicorn exploded.
The investment community learned that the user-side energy storage company Shenzhen Delian Minghai Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Delian Minghai") has completed four rounds of financing since 2021, with a total amount of more than 600 million yuan. The investors have gathered well-known investment institutions such as source code capital, Chinalco Zhejiang Junrong Fund, Kunpeng Guangyuan, Dachen Caizhi, as well as well-known head strategic institutions in the industry. So far, the latest valuation of Delan Minghai has reached $1 billion.
The helmsman of Delan Minghai is a Jilin native with rich entrepreneurial experience - Yin Xiangzhu. In 2006, he began to enter the lithium battery industry, starting his first entrepreneurial career. In 2009, the energy storage R&D team was established in Shenzhen. In 2013, Yin Xiangzhu founded the Delan Minghai to locate the user-side energy storage track. After nine years, it has transformed Delan Minghai from an unknown start-up company to a rare national "specialized and new giant" enterprise in the micro-storage industry.
Energy storage, a super track now crowded with investors. "The energy storage project is basically in a state of frenzy. There are hundreds of investment institutions competing for the head project, and many angel projects are valued at hundreds of millions of yuan, which is too hot." A domestic investor concerned about new energy sighed. There is no doubt that this is already one of the busiest new energy tracks this year.
Graduated from the Department of Chemistry, from Jilin to Shenzhen
This is a story of northeast people going south to start a business.
Yin Xiangzhu, born in Jilin, is a grassroots entrepreneur after the 1970s, and has a master's degree in business administration from Peking University. Around 2009, Yin Xiangzhu, who has been in the lithium battery industry for many years, began to sprout the idea of starting a business. He first chose the lithium ion battery application field he was familiar with. However, with the rise of the domestic lithium battery market, lithium battery PACK factories have been set up one after another, which is seriously implicated. Seeing all this, Yin Xiangzhu realized that the lithium-ion battery application industry has entered the red sea stage. "The entire industry barrier is not high, which is not suitable for our long-term development."
Therefore, Yin Xiangzhu made a systematic analysis of the whole industry and finally decided to transform into the energy storage circuit, focusing on the field of household energy storage system.
What is energy storage? As the name implies, energy storage is to store energy and release it when needed, similar to a large "power warehouse". The application of energy storage is very extensive, including portable mobile power supply in daily life, power battery of new energy vehicles, and ultra-large battery pack of energy storage power stations.
At that time, the global understanding of energy storage was still in a vague state, and the domestic energy storage technology had just entered the stage of industrialization exploration. Yin Xiangzhu and his team members were among the first "crab eaters".
During this period, by chance, Yin Xiangzhu unexpectedly discovered the business opportunities in the overseas energy storage market. After a major earthquake that shocked the world around 2011, the energy storage products produced by Yin Xiangzhu's team exploded in the Japanese market, which gave them a new market development direction.
However, at that time, most of the energy storage products sold by Yin Xiangzhu's team were not independently researched and developed, but were assembled by outsourcing key components such as inverters, battery packs, BMS, which undoubtedly buried hidden dangers in product quality. In 2012, Yin Xiangzhu witnessed a series of quality accidents in the industry, which made him reflect deeply.
This lesson made Yin Xiangzhu clearly realize that in order to make a good product, we must control the entire underlying technology. At the end of the year, the technical team was redeployed. In 2013, Yin Xiangzhu came out independently with the energy storage product line and founded the Delan Minghai, focusing on the user-side energy storage track.
At first, while doing the ODM business of user-side photovoltaic energy storage integration, Delan Minghai continued to increase its investment in research and development. For a long time, Delan Minghai was unknown, and its business operation had been in trouble. By 2020 or so, the company's products have gradually become well-known in the market and are very good at understanding consumer needs. Yin Xiangzhu is well aware that the manufacturing industry is very popular, but close to the end users, the high added value and long-term barriers of the brand will give the company a chance to become a truly excellent manufacturing enterprise.
In April 2020, Delan Minghai launched its own brand BLUETTI, which became popular overseas. Three months later, BLUETTI BLUTTI AC200 outdoor power supply was launched on the crowdfunding platform INDIEGOGO and achieved good results. The whole crowdfunding project lasted 48 days, and the crowdfunding amount was about US $6.7 million, which was 62098% of the target amount, and more than 7000 people supported it. According to the official feedback of INDIEGOGO, BLUETTI created several historical highs: the fastest speed reached US $1 million and the shortest time reached US $3 million. INDIEGOGO ranked 10th in the history of crowdfunding, and the amount of crowdfunding for energy storage products reached the highest level in history at that time.
At present, Delan Minghai has established an intelligent, automated and information-based manufacturing system and a fully adopted MES information-based production management system, and the company's business has gradually changed from ODM to its own brand. "There is a big difference between making ODM and making brands. When making ODM, it is controlled by dealers and the gross profit rate is low. The gross profit rate of making brands using DTC mode has increased significantly." Yin Xiangzhu introduced.
After more than 10 years of entrepreneurship, this entrepreneurial veteran took advantage of new energy to build the Delan Minghai into a dark horse in the energy storage track.
VC/PE gathered, industrial giants came
Along the way, a quite luxurious group of investors gathered behind Delan Minghai. However, it is rarely known that Tran Minh Hai experienced a difficult time in early financing. Before 2020, Yin Xiangzhu and his company were in trouble more than once. At the worst, the salary was delayed for two or three months.
In September 2020, Source Capital contacted Yin Xiangzhu's team for the first time. "Even under such difficult circumstances, none of their core technology team left, which is enough to show the personality charm of the founder." Wang Di, Executive Director of Source Capital, recalled to the investment community.
At that time, source code capital has systematically found out several distributed energy storage projects located in Shenzhen, and the comprehensive capacity of Delan Minghai is the most prominent. Wang Di said that from ID design, battery PACK system to BMS, inverter and other key technology links in the energy storage industry, Delan Minghai has a relatively comprehensive underlying technical capability, and an experienced R&D team. "From design to R&D to manufacturing, Delan Minghai can complete it by itself, which is a bright sight." After the completion of the due diligence, source code capital participated in the Delan Minghai A round of financing at the end of 2020, Later, he made several rounds of follow-up shots.
From 2021, carbon-neutralization began to sweep the venture capital circle, and the rarely exposed Delan Minghai began to enter the investors' vision, and financing became more and more smooth. In just one year, Deminghai has continued to complete four rounds of financing, with a financing amount of more than 600 million yuan. The investors have gathered well-known investment institutions such as Source Capital, Chinalco Zhejiang Junrong Fund, Kunpeng Guangyuan, Dachen Financial Intelligence, as well as well-known head strategic institutions in the industry. Mountain View Capital has served as the strategic financing consultant in the past few rounds and in the future.
It is not an exception that the financing boom in the Delan Minghai is booming. When the primary market consumption, TMT, enterprise services and other track strategies enter the cold winter period, the energy storage track is still hot, and it seems that all investors are looking at new energy. "Two years ago, we hardly saw investors, and the financing progress was very slow. Now, as long as we release the financing signal, the active investors in the market will come to chat." said a founder of the energy storage startup company in South China.
Here is a set of data - according to PEDATA MAX data of Zero2IPO Research Center, the number of investment cases in China's clean energy field is mainly concentrated in the field of new energy power generation and energy storage, accounting for 38% and 34% respectively; Among the investments in the energy storage field, the investment activity of lithium battery is the highest, and the number of investment cases accounts for 75.9% of the total investment cases in the energy storage field.
Energy storage has become one of the most popular new energy tracks, where unicorns are emerging in batches.
For example, the star project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences - China National Energy Reserve. Established in 2018, China Storage Guoneng is an energy storage equipment provider and an industrialized company founded by means of pricing and equity of scientific and technological achievements. Its technology and R&D team are from the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In May this year, the Bank of China Guoneng just completed a round of pre-A+financing of 320 million yuan, with investors including Huakong Fund, Zhongke Chuangxing, CMB International, Lenovo Star, Puhua Capital, Gaorong Capital, Three Gorges Energy, Cuiwei Group, Zhongbi Fund, Xinding Capital, etc. So far, the Reserve Bank of China has completed three rounds of financing with a valuation of billions.
There is also Shandong Cloud Storage New Energy, which completed a pre-A round of financing of more than 100 million yuan in June this year, led by Lanchi Venture Capital, and Fosun and Xianfeng continue to follow. Behind the cloud storage of new energy is Professor Cisong, who is the chief scientist of the China Energy Internet Development Strategy Research Group of the National Energy Administration and a researcher of the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University. According to people familiar with the matter, this round of financing of cloud storage is also hot, "taking a bunch of TS".
"With the rising tide, we obviously feel that the valuation system of energy storage projects this year is higher than that of last year." Wang Di analyzed that the valuation system of similar founding teams and companies at similar development stages this year is 30% higher than that of last year. Of course, more investors are more afraid of missing than investing more. At present, a group of investors who focus on consumption and the Internet have turned to energy storage, which makes the originally hot track more crowded.
The next trillion-level market
Energy storage, the next trillion-level market to erupt? Most investors are convinced.
Why is energy storage so important? As early as in the era dominated by thermal power, the output and use of electricity could not be matched, and pumped storage came into being. Up to now, pumped energy storage has become the most mature energy storage technology with the largest installed capacity. With the increase of the proportion of renewable energy, coal power is gradually withdrawn, and the technical routes such as electrochemical energy storage, mechanical energy storage, electromagnetic energy storage, hydrogen energy storage and thermal energy storage are gradually developed. The energy storage industry has also ushered in a huge development opportunity.
"Because of the European energy crisis and other reasons, the user-side energy storage, especially the household energy storage, can be expected to penetrate at a relatively high growth rate in the next 2-3 years, so it has received widespread attention from investors." Huang Qin, partner of Mountain View Capital, added.
Many investment institutions often refer to a policy in their research. On January 29, 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Energy Administration jointly issued the Implementation Plan for the Development of New Energy Storage during the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan", setting the development goal of new energy storage; It is proposed that by 2025, from the initial stage of commercialization to large-scale development, it has the conditions for large-scale commercial application; The electrochemical energy storage technology was further improved, and the system cost was reduced by more than 30%; By 2030, new energy storage will be fully market-oriented.
In the view of investors, the policy has stirred the pace of the energy storage industry, and the general trend of energy structure reform is one of the fundamental factors to promote the development of the industry.
The existing capacity of frequency regulation and peak regulation of thermal power and hydropower units is difficult to meet the demand of the future power grid, while wind power and photovoltaic are intermittent energy, which often leads to some energy waste. Take photovoltaic as an example. In rainy and snowy weather and at night, solar energy cannot generate electricity.
Fortunately, energy storage can solve the congenital deficiency of photovoltaic and wind power. When clean energy such as photovoltaic, wind and hydropower are sufficient, energy storage technology will store electric energy and release the stored power when needed. Therefore, in the context of the global power demand blowout, energy storage has become the fourth basic element of the power system from "source-network-load" to "source-network-load-storage", and has become an important infrastructure in the era of electricity.
What makes investors more excited is that energy storage is a blue ocean market with an extremely wide coverage. According to Haitong Securities, the upstream of energy storage mainly includes suppliers of battery raw materials, electronic components, etc., the midstream mainly includes suppliers of battery systems, energy storage converters, energy management systems and other accessories, and the downstream includes end users from energy storage system integrators and installers to industrial and commercial, power grid companies, wind power plants, etc.
Therefore, energy storage has become a special track with both certainty and large market. The data shows that the domestic energy storage market is expected to grow rapidly from 2022 to 2025, and the new installed capacity is expected to exceed 120GWh in 2025, with the market scale exceeding 185 billion yuan and the annual compound growth rate of nearly 100%.
With the energy storage fire, the myth of creating wealth began to unfold quietly. Since April this year, the energy storage sector has soared all the way, and in July, there were many stocks related to the concept of energy storage. More than that, IPOs are coming.
At present, Huabao Xinneng, the "first share of portable energy storage", has launched its IPO application and is about to land on the GEM. At the end of the last century, Sun Zhongwei, the founder of Huabao Xinneng, graduated from university and came to Shenzhen Huaqiangbei, the "First Street of China Electronics", to work hard. In 2011, Sun Zhongwei founded Huabao Xinneng, which started with the ODM business of Power Bank, and then successfully transformed to the portable energy storage track with independent brands such as "Electric Waiter" and "Jackery". Now, Sun Zhongwei and Wen Meichan, together with Huabao Xinneng, are about to step on the stage of IPO bell ringing.
There is also EcoFlow, a mobile energy storage unicorn, which has signed a listing guidance agreement with CICC in 2021 and plans to be listed in China. In 2017, 27-year-old Wang Lei founded the mobile energy storage company EcoFlow Zhenghao in Shenzhen. Since its establishment, EcoFlow Zhenghao has not only received the support of Li Zexiang, Gan Jie, Gao Bingqiang and other professors, but also the shares of well-known investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Hillhouse Venture Capital and CICC Capital.
This may be another group of new entrepreneurs after the Internet. Since most of these energy storage startups preparing for IPO are gathered in Shenzhen, they are ridiculed and expected to drive the property price in Shenzhen.
"The industrial design and assembly process involved in the energy storage industry is very similar to that of the consumer electronics industry. Therefore, in the case of setbacks in the consumer electronics industry, the new energy industry represented by energy storage has developed rapidly and brought a wave of development dividends to Shenzhen." Wang Di said frankly.
However, this does not mean that the energy storage investment is heading for the harvest period. Huang Qin of Mountain View Capital reminded that as long as it is manufactured, it will face the deterioration of the competition pattern in the long run, and the growth dividend of the industry will eventually return to the normal. Companies that can stay at the poker table should have both the ability of manufacturing cost control and technological innovation, and the product gene of consumer insight.
At present, China's new energy storage projects (such as batteries, hydrogen energy storage, etc.) are still in the early stage of commercialization. In 2025, the transformation of energy storage from the initial stage of commercialization to large-scale development will be realized, and until 2030, the comprehensive market-oriented development of energy storage will be realized. The marketization of energy storage will be a long process, not overnight.
The final fruit of victory will always belong to those who are waiting patiently. |
