A few days ago, SAIC Motor released its 2021 annual financial report. Looking back on the past year, SAIC Motor has achieved double growth in revenue and net profit, and the negative impact brought about by the epidemic before the epidemic is gradually dissipating.
According to the financial report data, in 2021, SAIC Motor achieved operating income of 779.85 billion yuan, an increase of 5.1% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 24.53 billion yuan, an increase of 20.1% year-on-year.
Due to the good performance, SAIC Motor also took out a large dividend to give back to shareholders. During the reporting period, it is proposed to pay a cash dividend of 6.82 yuan (including tax) for every 10 shares, a total of 7.847 billion yuan (including tax), and the total cash dividend in 2021 will account for 35% of the net profit attributable to the parent (including repurchase).
In terms of gross profit margin, the gross profit margin of SAIC Motor's automobile manufacturing industry will reach 9.63% in 2021, an increase of 0.6 percentage points over 2020. In addition, the gross profit margin of the Group's vehicle business reached 4.91%, an increase of 0.39 percentage points over the previous year. Although the gross profit margin level is not high, compared with the serious epidemic in 2020, this level reveals the trend of the Group's vehicle business picking up.
The increase was mainly due to the recovery of the Group's sales figures. According to the financial report, SAIC Motor achieved terminal retail sales of 5.811 million units in 2021, an increase of 5.5% year-on-year. Among them, SAIC Roewe will sell 375,000 new cars in 2021, an increase of 8% year-on-year, driving the proportion of self-owned brand passenger cars in SAIC's total sales to exceed the 50% mark for the first time. In addition, the sales volume of new energy vehicles reached 733,000 units, an increase of 128.9% year-on-year, and the group's electrification transformation trend was obvious.
Overseas markets, SAIC Motor exported a total of 697,000 new cars in 2021, an increase of 78.9% year-on-year, of which independent brands accounted for more than 60%, and new cars were sold to Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, ASEAN, South Asia and other overseas markets.
From the perspective of sales growth, independent brands, new energy vehicles and overseas exports have achieved double-digit growth in 2021, which is the "new troika" that drives the group's sales growth.
It is worth mentioning that 2021 is also a year of rapid growth in SAIC's R& D expenses, in the fields of new energy, intelligent networking, digitalization and other technologies, SAIC Motor has invested heavily, and in 2021, R & D expenses will reach 19.668 billion yuan, an increase of 46.83% year-on-year. On March 1, SAIC Motor just announced the establishment of the General Institute of Innovation Research and Development, which will fully integrate its five major information technology centers, covering software, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, network security and other advantageous resources, and form an independent R&D talent team of more than 10,000 people.
In addition, SAIC Motor also announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2022. From January to March this year, SAIC's operating income reached 182.47 billion yuan, down 3.5% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies reached 5.515 billion yuan, down 19.44% year-on-year.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic began in Shanghai and other places in March, SAIC Motor Group, which is in the midst of it, has also been affected to a certain extent. From January to March, SAIC Resisted the pressure and achieved sales of 1.22 million units, an increase of 6.8% year-on-year. According to the plan, SAIC Motor has formulated an overall sales volume of 10% in 2022, that is, the sales performance in the new year will exceed 6.39 million vehicles, of which the growth rate of new energy and overseas sales will strive to reach 50% and 20% respectively. Judging from the current situation, in order to successfully complete the annual task, SAIC still needs to work harder.