Introduction: Do you remember the "OpenDay" in Chang'an on the shore of Yangcheng Lake last year?
As in January 2022, when various listed automobile companies released the February production and sales express reports, there was no trace of Changan Automobile for a long time, and even the Association of Automobile Associations had to reflect Changan Automobile in an "estimated" way in the February national passenger car market analysis report.
Objectively speaking, the change in the date of the production and sales express report of any listed automobile company cannot explain anything, but in the data released by the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, people already have an ominous premonition: compared with January, Changan Automobile's February analysis report has fallen from the previous second place to the bottom two in the narrow passenger car wholesale sales TOP 10 and the generalized passenger car wholesale and retail TOP 10 rankings.
This even triggered a chain reaction in the capital market, the day after the release of the report of the Association, Changan Automobile's stock price hit a new 10-month low of 10.54 yuan / share, which is almost close to the same period last year, touching the risk of breaking.
1) Late February production and sales, really bad?
Will Changan Automobile, which once recorded an overall year-on-year increase in production and sales in January, really have a serious decline in February?
Sure enough, after the close of the market on the evening of March 10, Changan Automobile's February production and sales express was late, and people did not wait for the good news to look forward to. Monthly production was 131,000 units, down 17.27% y/y and 47.13% m/m, and sales were 138,000 units, down 15.1% y/y and 50.2% m/m.
Among them, the sales of Chongqing Changan and Hefei Changan have both declined sharply, and the autonomous sector has become the "hardest hit area" of Changan Automobile. Changan CS75 is also rarely squeezed out of China's SUV sales list TOP 5, which is inevitably regrettable.
In the sales ranking of 18 major automobile companies registered in the auto K-line statistics, Changan Automobile ceded the original third position to GAC Group, and is also the only enterprise in the top 5 of the total list that has fallen comprehensively year-on-year and has the lowest cumulative increase.
Remember that when the January "Opening Red" production and sales express was released, it coincided with the internal personnel changes of Changan Automobile, and its stock price fell to the lowest in the past six months on the same day. However, when the February decline in the production and sales express was released, Changan Automobile's stock price was red against the trend in the following trading day.
The question is, why was the original "opening red" not bought by the capital market, but now the overall decline in production and sales has achieved a rise in stock prices?
2) Don't let a momentary warm-up become a flash in the pan
It is worth mentioning that not long after the release of the February Production and Marketing Express, a "Report on the Serious Shortage of Sales Resources Caused by insufficient supply of Core Suppliers such as Bosch" was put on the Internet, which mentioned that "since February, bosch airbag controllers, EPBI and other material shortages have been the most serious, resulting in a continuous sharp decline in output, and a serious shortage of market terminal resources."
There is a saying that when announcing the production and sales data, it is not only Changan Automobile that is affected by the chip shortage, Geely Automobile and Great Wall Motors also mention this reason in the production and sales data announcement, and from the perspective of decline, the severity of the impact of Great Wall Motors is higher than that of Changan Automobile.
However, this time, Great Wall Motors did not wait with Changan Automobile to the last time to release the production and sales express report, as it did when it released the January production and sales express, but released its own production and sales on the same day that the Federation released the monthly data.
Another bigger difference is that Changan Automobile once created a "good start" in January, ending the previous five consecutive months of year-on-year decline, and when the February data came out, people began to worry that the good results in January may be short-lived.
It is even more regrettable that when seeing this "Changan Automobile Reports of Various Departments" disseminated on the Internet so clearly pointing to the problem to Bosch, it is easy to think of last year's Changan "OpenDay" activity.
In fact, many car companies will hold their own open day activities, and Changan's "OpenDay" has also expanded from the Chongqing Yubei factory to the Bosch Suzhou Technology Research and Development Center near Yangcheng Lake last year. It is hard to imagine that the good memories of a year ago are now worthless in this suspected internal document because of the decline in production and sales.
3) Chang'an lacks core, and capital is ruthless
Capital has always only looked at interests and does not talk about feelings.
Changan Automobile's stock price once again returned to the downtrend after a brief reddish, falling 1.22% on March 14, almost spitting out the part that rose in the previous trading day.
Auto K Line once mentioned the three major expectations of the capital market for Changan Automobile when analyzing changan automobile's past production and sales express, and now faces the risk of the stock price breaking again, which is probably more of the capital market's concern about it: joint venture dependence.
Perhaps for many people, when changan automobile is mentioned, it is difficult to think of Changan Ford and Changan Mazda for the first time, which were once popular joint venture car companies, but in the latest February production and sales express, don't look at Changan Automobile's year-on-year decline, Changan Ford's monthly sales increased by 9.2% year-on-year, and continued to maintain a sales level of more than 10,000.
What is even more unexpected is that Changan Mazda, which was busy with business integration not long ago, increased its production in February by 8.9% year-on-year, and its sales increased by 58.4% year-on-year, while almost standing on the baseline of monthly sales of more than 10,000 units with a sales performance of 9959 vehicles.
The gradual recovery of the two joint ventures, combined with the latest financial report (2021 third quarter report) mentioned, Changan Automobile's investment income in associates and joint ventures reached 597 million yuan. People seem to have the same expectations that Changan Automobile has a strong joint venture group such as GAC Group. Among the rating reasons such as "recommendation" and "buy" released by a number of investment institutions recently, the performance of the joint venture company is also one of their most core expectations for Changan Automobile.
On the eve of the two sessions of the National People's Congress not long ago, Zhu Huarong, secretary of the party committee and chairman of Changan Automobile, after relaxing the share ratio, made suggestions for the introduction of foreign car companies by local governments, and he believed that if the business layout of foreign car companies in China could not be reasonably guided, it might lead to the emptying of existing joint venture production capacity and waste of car-making resources. It is recommended to strengthen the control of investment access policies in the automotive industry, strengthen the safety review of foreign-related investment projects (production capacity), and prevent blind distribution and duplicate construction investment.
This is easily reminiscent of January 26, Jiangling Motors, Ford Motor 51:49 shares to invest in jiangling ford technology company officially announced the establishment. At the same time, the pace of further independence of Ford's electric vehicle business in the future is almost a foregone conclusion.
In the new international situation, it is difficult to say how much patience the capital market will leave for Changan Automobile, but it is estimated that this year's Changan "OpenDay" may have to change to a new place.