On the evening of July 2, SERES (601127.SH) issued an announcement stating that the company's controlling subsidiary SERES Automotive Co., Ltd. intends to acquire 919 registered or pending text and graphic trademarks such as "Wenjie" and 44 related design patents held by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and its affiliates, with a total purchase price of 2.5 billion yuan.
May 24, 2024, SERES Automotive Wuyun Lake Headquarters in Chongqing.
This move means that SERES will acquire all categories of "Wenjie" and other related trademark rights and application rights, and related design patents currently held by Huawei around the world.
Seres said that this transaction will not affect the joint business of the two parties, and the two parties will further deepen their cooperative relationship. Based on the consistency of market recognition of products and brands, the relevant target assets of this transaction will be exclusively used for the joint business of the two parties.
Huawei transferred the trademarks of "Wenjie" and other series to Seres, which obviously conveyed Huawei's firm strategic direction of "not making cars". Huawei responded that it would continue to support Seres in making and selling "Wenjie". Huawei has always insisted on not making cars, but using leading intelligent connected car technology to continuously help car companies make and sell good cars. Huawei will continue to work with car companies to create intelligent car products for users and provide smart travel experience.
AITO is a new energy vehicle brand jointly created by Huawei and SERES. It was officially launched in December 2021, and has successively launched AITO M5, M7, M9 and other series of models. In June this year, AITO delivered 42,780 vehicles, setting a record high.
At the same time, SERES recently announced that it has signed an agreement with Huawei to further deepen its joint business cooperation.
According to the agreement, under the premise of the original cooperation framework remaining unchanged, SERES and Huawei will give full play to their respective resources and endowment advantages, focus on the AITO brand under SERES, and jointly design and market to provide users with high-end smart electric vehicle products and smart travel solutions. This signing is the second related agreement signed by SERES and Huawei after they signed a deepening joint business agreement in February last year.
Recently, Huawei has transferred the "Smart World" and "Enjoy World" trademarks to Chery and BAIC New Energy respectively. In addition to the transfer of the "Wenjie" trademark to SERES, the trademarks of Huawei's Hongmeng Intelligent Driving's smart cars have all been transferred to the corresponding vehicle manufacturers.
Since Seres started cooperating with Huawei in 2019, Seres has been losing money for four consecutive years, with a total net loss of 9.835 billion yuan. However, with the increase in sales, Seres turned losses into profits in the first quarter of this year, achieving a net profit of 220 million yuan.
