Introduction: In the past 2021, despite the impact of supply chain gaps, gac group's Japanese joint ventures have maintained a stable performance. In addition, its own brand camp has made certain breakthroughs in different markets.
(Text/Pan Yuchen Editor/Lou Bing) During the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, GAC Group released a future-oriented strategic plan to achieve carbon neutrality in the whole life cycle of products by 2050. Among them, GAC's E'an plant will achieve zero carbon emissions in 2023, and the GAC Trumpchi brand will achieve full hybridization. By 2025, GAC will achieve half of the sales of its own brand new energy vehicles, and in 2030, the Group's new energy vehicle sales will account for half.
Although THE NEW PLAN OF GAC GROUP IS AMBITIOUS, IT MUST UNDOUBTEDLY BE BASED ON ITS CURRENT PERFORMANCE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE ITS GOALS IN FIVE TO TEN YEARS OR EVEN 20 TO 30 YEARS.
A few days ago, GAC Group announced its automobile production and sales data for the whole year of 2021. In the past year, GAC Group produced 2,138,100 vehicles, an increase of 5.08% year-on-year, and sold 2,144,400 vehicles, an increase of 4.92% year-on-year.
In terms of major businesses, the vast majority of GAC Group's sales were passenger cars, with a cumulative sales of 2.1417 million units in the whole year, an increase of 4.97% year-on-year. Only 2,712 commercial vehicles were sold, down more than 20% year-on-year.
In addition, GAC also recently announced its 2021 performance forecast, and it is expected that the annual net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies will be about 6.6 billion to 7.6 billion yuan, an increase of about 11%-27% year-on-year; and the net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses will be about 5.6 billion to 6.7 billion yuan, an increase of about 16% to 39% year-on-year.
In this regard, GAC said that in 2021, the company made every effort to overcome the impact and challenges of chip shortage, rising raw material prices, repeated epidemics and other aspects, and achieved a steady increase in production and sales throughout the year; at the same time, through product structure adjustment, strengthening cost control and other measures, it achieved a steady improvement in operating efficiency.
The two fields are on the same road
Like Dongfeng Motor Group, the Japanese joint ventures, led by Honda and Toyota, are the main sales force of GAC Group, and the cumulative sales of the two companies account for three-quarters of GAC Group's total sales. However, in the past 2021, due to supply chain defects caused by the epidemic, the production and sales of joint ventures, including Japan, have been under pressure.
In fact, the "two fields" joint venture with GAC showed a different sales trend last year.
Specifically, Guangqi Honda sold 780,300 vehicles last year, down 3.17% year-on-year.
In Guangqi Honda's lineup, the strongest Performer accord sold more than 200,000 units in the whole year, but fell 4.4% from the same period last year. The most dragging force is the A-class sedan Lingpai. Last year,000 cumulative sales of only 44,000 vehicles, failed to hold the 100,000-vehicle mark, a year-on-year decline of up to 61%, and instead of Lingpai into this segment of the market "Broad Imagination" style, the first month of the listing sales of only 4,000 vehicles for the time being, obviously can not make up for the gap in the short term.
In contrast, Guangqi Honda's performance in the small car market is relatively stable, and the sales of binzhi, Fit and other models are about 100,000 units.
In the mainstream SUV market, the compact SUV Haoying has not been affected too much by the chip shortage, with cumulative sales of more than 160,000 vehicles in the whole year, an increase of 6.4% year-on-year. However, the performance of Guangqi Honda in the medium and large market has declined to a certain extent, and the annual sales of Guandao are only more than 40,000 vehicles, down 24% year-on-year.
As for the luxury brand Acura due to the slow iteration of new products, sales have seriously declined, with less than 6,000 vehicles in the whole year.
Compared with GAC Honda, GAC Toyota has played a stable role throughout the year and has not been significantly affected by the chip shortage. Gac Motor Toyota sold 828,000 vehicles in the full year, up 8.23% year-on-year.
Among them, in the car market, Ralink and Camry have significant advantages in their respective market segments, with annual sales of more than 200,000 vehicles, and Camry is an increase of nearly 20% over the same period last year.
In the field of SUVs, with the listing of the Veranda, which is promoted to the benchmark RAV4, GAC Toyota has also avoided the situation of relying on the Highlander model alone in the past. Through the launch of several new models last year, Veranda's advantages have not only been further consolidated, but also reduced the sales of GAC Toyota and FAW Toyota to less than 5,000 units.
In addition, after the Guangzhou Auto Show, GAC Toyota has successively listed two SUV models, Fenglanda and Weisa, making the company's product lineup in 2022 more robust.
Although the traditional fuel vehicle market can still maintain the basic disk, but in the emerging field of automobile electrification, intelligence and other emerging areas, the Japanese have generally put themselves in the position of catch-up. The hybrid model that was originally the technical advantage of The Two Fields is not favored by the new energy policy in China, and the price is relatively high, and it is no longer advantageous over the growing independent brand models.
In the pure electric vehicle market, forced by the pressure of double integrals, the layout of "two fields" in China was not late until the second half of last year. Among them, Guangqi Honda released a pure electric vehicle model e:NP1 at the Guangzhou Auto Show last year. Toyota did not collectively release more than 10 electric vehicles until the end of the year. Although in the face of the world's largest new energy market, "Two Fields" have shown a positive and enterprising attitude towards the outside world, but its actual actions and product landing are still far away, and time has not stood on the side of "Two Fields".
Except for "Two Fields", the remaining joint venture brands under GAC Group are generally small in size and have a thin sense of existence. GAC Mitsubishi, also a Japanese company, has not produced a new car for several consecutive years since Outlander, and its existing product lineup is aging, with sales of only 66,000 units last year, down 12% year-on-year.
Gac Fiat Chrysler has only one brand left, Jeep, and there were no new products further launched last year, and sales were only more than 20,000 vehicles, more than half of the previous year.
The new energy lineup set another record
Although GAC Group's current dependence on "two fields" is still high, in the pure electric market, which is generally inferior in japan, GAC's own brands have found another way and become the fastest growing segment among the group's branches.
2021 is the first full year of gac new energy brand Aeon independence, with the listing of Aeon S Plus replacement models, GAC Aeon's sales growth momentum in the second half of the year is rapid, with cumulative sales of more than 120,000 vehicles in the whole year, an increase of 101.8% year-on-year.
In the process of rapid sales growth, GAC Group continues to increase its support and investment in GAC Aeon. With a capacity utilization rate of more than 100%, the expansion of GAC's first plant with a capacity of only 100,000 units per year has begun. At the beginning of this year, GAC Aeon announced that it will build a new plant with an annual production capacity of 400,000 units by 2023. In addition, GAC Aeon also said that it will build its own battery cell production line at the end of this year.
In terms of post-sales operations, at present, THE NUMBER OF GAC AEAN has accumulated nearly 300 channel terminal stores nationwide. In August last year, GAC Group also disclosed that it would promote the mixed ownership reform of GAC Aeon, achieve independent listing, and carry out employee shareholding to promote the development of the new energy sector.
However, there is a certain positioning ambiguity problem in Aeon that is worth thinking about by manufacturers.
At present, among the four models sold by Aeon, two have an average transaction price of less than 200,000 yuan and one is about 200,000 yuan, and the cumulative sales account for more than 99% of the total Aeon brand, of which only the Aeon S model accounts for nearly 60%. The only model priced at nearly 300,000 yuan, the Eian LX, last year's cumulative sales of only more than 1,000 vehicles, a year-on-year decline of more than 60%.
In addition, the Aeon LX Plus model with a battery life of more than 1,000 km and three lidars as the main selling points has been launched at the beginning of this year, and the models equipped with these configurations are priced at about 400,000 yuan.
From the perspective of Aeon's product layout and price coverage, this has obviously exceeded the carrying capacity of a "high-end smart electric vehicle brand" positioning. This could unduly deplete the Aeon brand's product and market focus capabilities. Whether he can withstand such a degree of expansion is a huge question for Aehan.
On the other hand, GAC's passenger car traditional fuel vehicle business returned to a positive growth track in 2021 after undergoing adjustments in the previous year. In the whole year, a total of 324,200 new vehicles were sold, an increase of more than 10% year-on-year. Among them, the launch of new sedan models led by Shadow Leopard has played a major role in promoting the fuel vehicle business, with cumulative sales of nearly 44,000 units in the whole year.
However, in contrast, the SUV, which is a traditional advantage project of GAC Trumpchi, is still in a downturn. Once ranked in the top two market segments, the Trumpchi GS4 is no longer favored by young consumers in the increasingly fierce market competition. Although Trumpchi had launched the GS4 PLUS in the middle of last year, its sales did not show a significant pick-up in the face of the Red Sea of the market, with cumulative sales of less than 100,000 vehicles in the whole year, a year-on-year decline of 25%.
In addition to the GS4 and Shadow Leopard, GAC Trumpchi has both GA sedan series and GS SUV series product structure is quite aging, and sales of GA6, GS3, GS7, GS8 and other models are still declining sharply.
For the current GAC Trumpchi, the good news is that product iterations based on the new platform are on the way. Among them, the new second-generation GS8, which debuted in the second half of last year, has fired its first shot this year.
According to the new plan of GAC Group, in the future, Trumpchi's own brand will be fully hybridized and gradually replace the existing fuel models. However, considering that the layout of strong independent brands in the field of hybrid is generally before GAC, there is no Trumpchi brand with clear product landing, and it is self-evident that the difficulty is self-evident if it is necessary to catch up with it.
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