SAIC Motor's April production and sales analysis: lean down and look forward to a better take-off

Introduction: No one expected That Shanghai would experience such a April, and people may have long been prepared for the worst of SAIC's April production and sales.

In April, due to the impact of the epidemic, car companies in Jilin and Shanghai stopped work on a large scale. In the second half of the year, some analysts said that this would lead to the loss of nearly 20% of the production capacity of Chinese cars. Fortunately, driven by intensive favorable policies, a curtain of "resumption of work" has slowly opened. However, despite this, it is difficult to have much hope for SAIC's April production and sales data.

On May 6, SAIC Motor's April production and sales report was released. According to the data, in the single month of April, SAIC Motor produced 158,200 units, down 62.02% and 62.32% year-on-year, respectively; sales of 166,600 units, down 60.3% and 62.41% year-on-year, respectively.

On the output side, in addition to SAIC Chia Tai and SAIC-GM-Wuling Indonesia Co., Ltd., which achieved double-digit growth year-on-year, and MG Automobile India Co., Ltd., which rose month-on-month, the production and sales data of the remaining domestic and foreign sectors of SAIC Group were spared and fell across the board.

Saic-Volkswagen and SAIC-GM's sales fell by more than 70% year-on-year, although the production base is not in the "poison circle", but SAIC-GM-Wuling's production and sales also showed a near-cliff-to-year decline.

Although people say that since the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology (hereinafter referred to as the Commission of Economy and Information Technology) launched the "white list" of resuming work and production, SAIC has never pressed the "pause button" under the challenge of the severe epidemic, but from the perspective of the overall decline of the group, it has exceeded the 58.56% decline in the same period in 2020, and even approached February 2020, that is, the performance of the first round of the epidemic.

The problem was that at that time, SAIC Motor recovered strongly with 11 consecutive months of positive growth, and this time people were also very much looking forward to the fact that SAIC Motor, which was leaning down, could take off better in the future.

1) The two joint ventures plummeted by 70%.

Looking forward to the same period last year, SAIC Volkswagen pressed SAIC-GM with a monthly sales performance of more than 100,000 vehicles, becoming the second sub-section of SAIC Group's sales. Today, a year later, SAIC Volkswagen's monthly sales fell by more than 72% year-on-year, barely exceeding 30,000 units, and its proportion in the entire group also shrank to 18.02%.

However, thanks to the strong performance of each month in the first quarter of 2022, SAIC Volkswagen's cumulative sales in 2022 still achieved a positive growth of 1.07% year-on-year, reaching 361,200 units.

Correspondingly, SAIC-GM's single-month and cumulative sales have declined, of which single-month year-on-year declines of 70.44% and 73.08% respectively, coupled with the fact that the first quarter of this year has been in a negative growth trend, so the cumulative sales volume has also fallen by 28.35%. It is also worth noting that this is also the 13th consecutive month of negative growth for SAIC-GM.

The two joint venture sectors fell sharply, which became a key factor in pulling down the overall performance of SAIC. The proportion of production and sales of the two joint ventures also decreased from 44.53% and 45.03% in the same period of 2021 to 32.32% in the same step.

2) The group's "dark horse" lost its hoof, and Shangtong Wuling "took care of itself"

In the past year, although the overall sales volume of SAIC Motor Group has been fluctuating continuously, SAIC Passenger Vehicles, as the "dark horse" of the group, has maintained a relatively good performance and growth rhythm, and the monthly sales in the fourth quarter of 2021 have remained above 10,000, and in 2022, they have always maintained a level of more than 60,000 vehicles.

By April, the "dark horse" had not escaped the nightmare of the horse losing its front hoof. Monthly production plummeted to 17,400 units, down 67.54% year-on-year, and the month-on-month decline reached 71.83% close to that of the two joint ventures, and single-month sales of 18,500 units, down 65.77% and 70.23% year-on-year, respectively.

However, similar to saicutical volkswagen, don't look at the decline in a single month, SAIC passenger car production and sales in 2022 still maintained growth, of which production reached 212,500 units, an increase of 5.04% year-on-year, and sales of 212,700 units, an increase of 6.7%. Although it was "one step into the air" in April, it is still the most important "BMW liangju" of SAIC.

In contrast, although the production base of SAIC-GM-Wuling is not in Shanghai and its surroundings, it is affected by the national automobile industry environment, and the production and sales in a single month and cumulative have declined to varying degrees. Among them, monthly production and sales fell from more than 130,000 units in the same period last year, plummeting by 47.65% and 43.57% year-on-year, respectively, to 72,000 units and 76,000 units, respectively. In addition, due to the almost in-place development of February and March, its cumulative production and sales in 2022 fell (-8.66%, -9.31%), and it was too busy to take care of itself.

At the same time, due to the contraction of saic oil group's overall sales volume, the performance of the two joint ventures failed, so that SAIC-GM-Wuling, which is far away in Guangxi, has reached the first place in the group in a single month and a cumulative production and sales ratio, especially the proportion of production and sales in a single month has reached 45.55% and 45.64% respectively.

On the 19th day of the city's sealing, Shanghai officially launched the "white list" system for key enterprises, focusing resources on key industries such as integrated circuits, automobile manufacturing, equipment manufacturing, and biomedicine, and a total of 666 key enterprises resumed work and production. Subsequently, on April 22, the vice mayor of Shanghai announced that 70% of the above 666 enterprises had resumed work and production.

On May 6, the day of the April production and sales express, SAIC Motor officially said that it is expected that from mid-May, the resumption rate of parts supporting enterprises that enter the "white list" will exceed 80%, and SAIC Motor will also be expected to gradually resume normal production in the same period, with the goal of achieving the same month's vehicle production and sales being the same as the same period last year.

People often say that "squats are for better take-offs", as the largest car company in China, SAIC Motor Group's production and sales level of about 160,000 vehicles in April made it have to temporarily "lean down".

So, in the next few days, can SAIC go faster and jump farther? In the recovery stage of relatively tight resources, how to balance the resource allocation between the two joint ventures and SAIC Passenger Vehicles? Let's look forward to the answer given in the May Production and Sales Bulletin.