Official announcement! GAC-Mitsubishi was dissolved and delisted
GAC-Mitsubishi, founded in 2012, lost out to China.
On the evening of October 24, GAC Group issued an announcement that, through the consensus of all shareholders, it intends to implement equity adjustment and other restructuring matters for GAC Mitsubishi and Guangzhou 3 Sales Company, mainly including the three shareholders jointly increasing the investment to GAC Mitsubishi and Guangzhou 3 Sales Company to settle debts, of which the Company invested no more than 1.577 billion yuan, and the total investment of the other two shareholders was not less than the amount increased by the Company.
In addition, the Company acquired 30% and 20% of the equity interests of GAC Mitsubishi held by Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Corporation respectively for a consideration of 1 yuan, and GAC Mitsubishi will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company after the completion of the transfer. GAC Mitsubishi transferred 50%, 30% and 20% of the shares of Guangsan Sales Company to the Company, Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Corporation for a consideration of 1 yuan. At the same time, in order to ensure the needs of daily operating funds, the shareholders of the three parties intend to increase the capital of the three sales companies by 450 million yuan after the completion of the transfer, of which the company will increase the capital by 225 million yuan.
On the same day, Mitsubishi Motors also announced on its official website about changes in its business structure in China. Mitsubishi Motors said in the notice that in the past two to three years, China's auto industry has faced rapid market changes, and the transition to electric vehicles has been faster than expected, and the company plans to launch new vehicles in December 2022 to recover sales, but the plan did not meet the standard, and from March this year, in order to adjust inventory, the plant operation was stopped. Based on this, we have thoroughly reviewed our strategy in China and terminated the localization of Mitsubishi brand vehicles in China.
At this point, GAC Mitsubishi will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of GAC Group, and GAC Mitsubishi Motors Sales Company will be jointly held by GAC Group, Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Corporation, and will continue to provide spare parts and after-sales services to GAC Mitsubishi owners. The restructuring also avoided the dissolution and liquidation of GAC-Mitsubishi.
On October 23, according to CaiLian News, a GAC Mitsubishi authorized dealer in Hebei Province said: "We don't do (GAC Mitsubishi) anymore, the authorization is gone." The manufacturer issued a notice saying that in the future, it will all be imported Mitsubishi, and domestic (Mitsubishi) will not be available. "At present, the exhibition hall has been basically emptied, sales staff have also chosen to leave, and the after-sales area will be officially closed in the near future. Another GAC-Mitsubishi dealership in Tianjin said that there are no Outlander cars in the store, and it takes about 10 days to order a car, but the source of the car is a stock car stored in the factory for more than a year, and a maximum discount of 50,000 yuan can be given. He pointed out: "There are many people who have consulted recently, and the discount can only be given to these, and we can't sell it too much at a loss, and the after-sales service of our store will always be available." ”
In addition to the above two dealers, a number of GAC-Mitsubishi dealers in Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin, Shanghai and other places will continue to operate normally in the short term. However, most of the landline phones displayed on GAC-Mitsubishi's official website cannot be dialed, and the actual contact number has been replaced with a private mobile phone number.
GAC Mitsubishi's defeat to this day has long been foreshadowed. Since March this year, GAC Mitsubishi has frequently fallen into rumors of "delisting", but they have subsequently been officially denied. In March, GAC Mitsubishi officially said: "GAC Mitsubishi is operating normally, Mitsubishi has not withdrawn, and the plant is also operating normally." At the end of April, GAC-Mitsubishi Motors' only production base in China, Changsha Plant, suspended production of new vehicles from March 8 to May due to sluggish sales, and is expected to restart production in June. Since April, the GAC Group has no longer announced GAC Mitsubishi's sales separately, and the official explanation is that the sales volume is not low enough to be listed separately.
In May, Mitsubishi Motors President Takao Kato clarified that the company has no plans to withdraw from the Chinese market. Despite "difficulties in China," the Changsha plant will restart production in June as planned. However, the Changsha plant not only failed to restart on schedule, but also fell into shutdown and layoffs. In July, a "letter to all employees of GAC Mitsubishi" showed that GAC-Mitsubishi products were affected by market transformation, sales were far from meeting expectations, and the company's operation was in trouble. In the context of industry changes, GAC-Mitsubishi's management and shareholders officially entered the temporary shutdown stage in June after careful discussion. At the same time, GAC-Mitsubishi needs to optimize the personnel structure according to the actual situation.
In September, it was reported that Mitsubishi Motors had decided to stop producing vehicles in China, and the company had begun final negotiations with the GAC Group. At that time, the head of Mitsubishi's public relations department, Toruji Inoue, said that the report was not an official release of the company, and "it is still in dialogue with shareholders and has not made any decisions." Although officials have repeatedly denied rumors of GAC Mitsubishi's delisting, it has been reduced to a marginal brand.
As one of the first Japanese brands to enter the Chinese market, Mitsubishi Motors has been in China for 50 years. As early as 1973, Mitsubishi sold medium-duty trucks in China, and since then established two joint ventures in the Chinese market, Southeast Motor and GAC Mitsubishi. However, although Mitsubishi Motors deployed the Chinese market very early, looking back on Mitsubishi's faltering years in China, its life in the Chinese market is really miserable.
In May 2012, GAC Group, Mitsubishi Motor Industry Co., Ltd., and Mitsubishi Corporation jointly established GAC-Mitsubishi Joint Venture, with shareholding ratios of 50%, 9.35%, and 40.65% respectively. Compared with Toyota Motor and Honda Motor, Mitsubishi Motors is relatively small, the model products are relatively single, and the channel layout is very limited, which is also the feedback of GAC Mitsubishi's "unsatisfactory" after entering the Chinese market.
At present, GAC Mitsubishi has a total of 4 models on sale, including the new Outlander, the new Jinxuan, Yige and the new energy model Artuco, of which only one new energy model is Artuco. Outlander is GAC-Mitsubishi's main sales product. GAC Mitsubishi was founded in 2012, but it was not until 2016 that the Eurolan was produced in Germany that GAC Mitsubishi shined. According to the data, from 2019 to 2019, GAC-Mitsubishi's annual sales were 117,300 units, 144,000 units, and 133,000 units, respectively. Since then, the Outlander's annual sales have been slow to decline, and the annual sales of the Outlander in 2020 are only 57,000 units, and the annual sales of GAC Mitsubishi have also fallen to 75,000 units. Now with the defeat of GAC Mitsubishi, Outlander may find it difficult to gain consumer recognition.
Or in order to reverse the decline, shareholders have previously transfused more than 2.8 billion yuan to GAC-Mitsubishi, but it is difficult to turn the tide after the huge amount of funds is entered. According to the latest announcement of GAC Group, as of December 31, 2022, GAC Mitsubishi had audited total assets of CNY 6.122 billion, total liabilities of CNY 4.959 billion, net assets of CNY 1.163 billion, operating income of CNY 4.130 billion and total profit of -RMB 1.349 billion in 2022. As of March 31, 2023, audited total assets were $4,198 million, total liabilities were $5,613 million and net assets were -$1,414 million.
As of press time, GAC Mitsubishi's WeChat public account, official Weibo and other account news updates stayed in April, and there has been no update since then. For GAC-Mitsubishi, which has seen its sales decline one after another, has a single model and a debt of nearly 4.959 billion yuan, its defeat in China is a foregone conclusion.
The industry believes that GAC Mitsubishi's termination of domestic production may be more conducive to the development of both Mitsubishi Motors and GAC Group, and GAC AION's takeover of the Changsha plant can also maximize the use of resources. According to the latest announcement of the GAC Group, after the completion of the restructuring, GAC Mitsubishi will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company and will be used for the production of its own brand new energy vehicles. The company will strengthen overall coordination and comprehensive policies, actively respond to the impact of the rapid development and fierce competition of the new energy automobile industry, and strive to achieve the expected goals of restructuring.
Of course, GAC Mitsubishi is not the only joint venture brand in a difficult situation, and in the fiercely competitive Chinese new energy vehicle market, the past 10 years may be the best decade for joint venture car companies. In the context of today's downturn, joint venture car companies must make fundamental innovations if they want to survive. At present, the trend of new energy has become unstoppable, which also means that new energy is the only way to compete between car companies, and the restructuring of GAC Mitsubishi has once again sounded the alarm for joint venture car companies, "unchanged is dead, change is live" may be any joint venture car companies can not escape the test of the era of electrification, and car companies in transition still need to seize time to keep up with the times.
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