Introduction: Four years later, can we really witness a blowout in the automotive industry again? And it is the outbreak of China's listed automobile companies.
In the past 2021, despite the production capacity pressure of "lack of core and less electricity" and the uncertainty brought about by the repeated epidemics, the vast majority of listed auto companies have released grand strategic goals for 2025.
One of the most interesting is that purely from the perspective of sales targets, as of now, the target sales of several enterprises that have been directly or indirectly announced have been added together, which has exceeded the industry's expectations of tens of millions of vehicles. Even if overseas exports are included, such a boom in full force cannot help but make people sigh: Can we really witness the blowout of the automotive industry once again?
For China's auto industry, 2025 is undoubtedly a key year. As the final year of the national "14th Five-Year Plan" strategy, 2025 is a very important phase node in the development schedule of energy conservation and emission reduction, alternative fuels, new energy and intelligent networked vehicles.
1 The head car company is in full swing
From the perspective of sales targets for 2025, FAW Group, SAIC Motor group and Dongfeng Motor rank in the top three.
Among them, SAIC Motor ranked first. At the World New Energy Vehicle Conference, which opened in September 2021, Wang Xiaoqiu, president of SAIC Motor, said that by 2025, SAIC plans to achieve global sales of more than 2.7 million new energy vehicles, accounting for no less than 32% of SAIC's vehicle sales. From this, it can be deduced that SAIC's total sales target for 2025 will be as high as 8.44 million units.
FAW Group ranked second with 6.5 million vehicles. In order to achieve this overall goal, its sub-brands will also be in full swing, including the joint venture FAW-Volkswagen 2.7 million vehicles, FAW Toyota 1.4 million vehicles, its own brand Hongqi 1 million vehicles, Besturn and Jiefang more than 600,000 vehicles.
Similar to SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Motor also did not directly announce its total sales target for 2025, and in the "Dongfang Fengqi" plan, it mentioned that commercial vehicles, independent brand passenger cars and new energy vehicles reached a target of 1 million yuan respectively, while new energy vehicles accounted for more than 20% of total sales, which can be inferred that its sales target for 2025 may be about 5 million units.
A rough finger count, SAIC, Dongfeng, FAW will digest the production capacity of 20 million vehicles, almost the sales scale of China's passenger cars in 2021.
It is worth mentioning here that the above three traditional large automobile groups have experienced a year-on-year decline in sales in 2021. Among them, FAW Group is the most serious, with annual sales of 3.5 million units, down 5.56%; although SAIC Motor Rank ranks first in sales in 2021 with a level of 5.464 million units, it also experienced a 2.45% decline in 2021.
Also in the 2021 sales ranking, the original rankings behind SAIC and Dongfeng are GAC Group and Changan Automobile, but if you calculate according to the 2025 sales target, you must first look at the most radical Great Wall Motor among the three major private car companies.
At the scene of the 2021 Science and Technology Festival, Great Wall Motor announced its strategic goal for 2025: annual sales will reach 4 million vehicles, of which new energy vehicles account for 80%. It should be known that the total annual sales of Great Wall Motors in 2021 is only 1.281 million units, although its 15.2% growth rate is the most prominent in the TOP 5, but compared with the span of 1 million vehicles to grow almost every year, this growth rate still needs to be refueled.
Geely Automobile, which has won the championship of its own brand passenger car for five consecutive years, has a slightly conservative sales target for 2025: 3.65 million units. However, it is worth noting that Geely Automobile's premise for this goal is that its market share ranks first among Chinese brands, and smart electric vehicles account for more than 30%. If the "smart electric vehicle" mentioned here is really an essential difference in product concept from the new energy vehicles mentioned in the target of other car companies, it is indeed a very expected performance.
After taking stock of the above, we finally returned to GAC Group and Changan Automobile, which sold more than 2 million vehicles in 2021. Facing the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, GAC Group aims to produce and sell 3.5 million vehicles and Changan Automobile 3 million vehicles. It is worth mentioning here that in the sales target of GAC Group, new energy models account for only 20%, which belongs to the lower level of the overall industry forecast. Not long ago, on January 24, with the release of a series of new models, Changan New Energy announced its sales target for 2025: 700,000 vehicles. If we understand that changan brand new energy accounted for 35% announced in the previous "14th Five-Year Plan", then the latest sales target is actually slightly lowered.
Also setting a sales target of 3 million units for 2025 is BYD. In 2021, BYD's total sales volume is 740,000 vehicles, don't look at the absolute value of sales is not high, but TA in the top ten sales list in 2021, with a year-on-year growth rate of 73.34%, has become second only to Tesla. Combined with BYD's large-scale land acquisition and factory construction in the past year, as well as the soaring market value, the enthusiasm of the capital market has made BYD involuntarily become crazy.
Overall, among these head car companies, in addition to about 20 million vehicles of the three major groups, 10 million of the top three private car companies, and 6.5 million of Changan Gac, how much will the scale of China's new cars be rushed to in 2025 to achieve their ambitions? Of course, there must be a "satellite" in this, and finally found a company far from the target.
2 Is 40 million vehicles in the Chinese market a dream?
Simply adding up the 2025 sales targets of the above car companies has exceeded 37 million vehicles, and counting Chery's 2 million vehicles and major new car manufacturing forces, it is very easy to break through 40 million vehicles in 2025.
Of course, after deducting some of the overseas markets, the gap will be narrowed, but the gap of nearly 10 million vehicles is also reminiscent of the comprehensive blowout of china's auto market after cars entered the family ten years ago. Can we really witness the pomp and circumstance of that year again in the next five years?
Not long ago, data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed that in 2021, the production and sales of mainland automobiles reached 26.082 million and 26.275 million units, respectively, an increase of 3.4% and 3.8% year-on-year, ending the downward trend of three consecutive years since 2018.
At the same time, the market share of new energy vehicles has increased to 13.4%, and the market share of Chinese brand cars has exceeded 44%, which has gradually approached the highest level in history.
There is no doubt that these data mean that China's auto industry has made a good start in the year of the "14th Five-Year Plan". Although the total sales volume is limited by the degree of market saturation, the target of the proportion of new energy is likely to be achieved in advance.
From the perspective of the capital market, it can also be found that the same trend is already very clear. According to the statistics of the automotive K line, the stock prices of the 72 major auto stocks on the record rose by an average of 16.4% in 2021, and the market value increased by 1336.109 billion yuan. Although the stock price of the passenger car sector rose slightly higher than that of the new energy and parts sector, from the perspective of market value, the latter overwhelmed the whole market with an increase of more than one trillion yuan.
It is worth mentioning here that the dealer sector, from the slight increase in stock prices, as well as the decline in market value, car dealers in 2021 seems to have a good life, but from the recent 2021 performance forecast released by major listed dealers, as well as the large-scale acquisition of Porsche's national sales network by Meidong Automobile, it is not difficult to see that luxury brands and ultra-luxury brands will show good market potential in the next few years.
In addition, in the recent activities held by the China Automobile Dealers Association, industry analysts are very optimistic about the market opportunities brought to dealers under the change of China's automobile consumption patterns in the future. With the new energy of online ride-hailing has become the trend of the times, while major traditional car companies have transformed into travel service providers, car dealers are also very likely to use their own positioning advantages to achieve business self-operation and leverage the market pattern.
However, from the perspective of passenger car retail sales, total social retail sales, and automobile consumption, China's automobile and macro economy are facing huge downward pressure, and weak demand may affect the Chinese auto market for a period of time.
Among the four major auto stock sectors in 2021, commercial vehicles are the only parts where both stock prices and market value have declined. Due to the comprehensive impact of many factors such as macroeconomics, infrastructure heat, and emission regulations, production and sales in 2021 fell by 10.7% and 6.6%, respectively, ending the good momentum of high-speed growth in the previous year.
More critically, as a relatively early field of opening up the stock ratio, coupled with the gap between domestic and foreign vehicles and parts, the next high-end heavy trucks of foreign brands have been domestically produced, which will be a very serious challenge for automobile groups similar to Dongfeng and other business imbalances.
It is not difficult to see that for ordinary consumers, in the next five years, there is a high probability of ushering in the blowout of the automobile market set off by intelligent electrification, but in the world of investors, the situation will be more complex and diversified under the concept of many high heat.
From the perspective of the overall sales market and capital market performance, 2021 is a good start for the "14th Five-Year Plan" strategy. However, focusing on specific auto listed companies, if they want to maintain their place in the industry at the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan", they almost always face a very difficult challenge to complete in a limited time.
Some people have likened the competition in the future of China's auto market to the transformation of "digital games" to "squid games", which although it sounds creepy, it is also a true portrayal of the cruelty of market competition.
How will China's auto stocks perform in 2021, please continue to pay attention to the upcoming annual "Auto Stock Price Rise and Fall List" and "Auto Industry List of Listed Companies" launched by Auto K Line.
Who is in charge of the ups and downs of 2025? Let's see each other in four years.