Cao Yuan is from the Vice-Pilot Temple
Smart Car Reference|Official Account AI4Auto
GAC Group's 2023 is a mixed bag.
The good news is that the annual sales volume exceeds 2.5 million vehicles, and the sales volume of new energy accounts for 22%, and the transformation performance is outstanding.
Revenue continued to break 100 billion yuan, reaching 129.706 billion yuan, equivalent to 355 million yuan in one day.
However, the worry is that the group's net profit in 2023 will be 4.429 billion yuan, a plunge of 45% from the previous year, and the earning power will return to the level of 2015.
More critically, the contract of Zeng Qinghong, the chairman of Guangzhou Automobile Group, who is about to be 63 years old and close to the legal retirement age, will expire in July this year.
GAC Group, which is in a critical period of transformation, may usher in a new helmsman.
How the GAC Group will perform in 2023
On the whole, GAC Group will refresh many of its own best results in 2023.
The annual production and sales exceeded 2.5 million units, and the sales volume was 2.505 million units, and about 6,863 units could be sold in one day, a year-on-year increase of 2.92%.
And in the domestic automobile market, it accounts for 8.32%, and the scale of production and sales ranks fifth in the country.
In addition, the new energy transformation performance is also good, with the group's new energy vehicle sales accounting for 22%, and the new energy sales of its own brands accounting for 58%.
Among them, GAC Aion's sales reached 480,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 77%, ranking third among domestic new energy vehicle companies.
At the same time, the total revenue also hit a new high, with an annual revenue of 128.757 billion yuan in 2023, and 355 million yuan can be recorded in one day, an increase of 17.62% over 2022.
In terms of revenue scale, GAC will be slightly lower than Great Wall Motors in China in 2023, ranking fourth overall.
In addition, the group's gross profit in 2023 will reach 6.814 billion yuan, an increase of 29% over the previous year, mainly due to the increase in gross profit of self-owned brand OEMs.
Moreover, the Group's R&D investment is also increasing.
In 2023, GAC's R&D investment will be 8.388 billion yuan, an increase of 28.53% over 2022, helping the group to add 3,195 patent applications, including 1,567 invention patents.
However, net profit, which is a key indicator, will plummet in 2023.
In 2023, GAC Group's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies will be 4.429 billion yuan, a decrease of 45.08% from 2022, the first decline in net profit since 2020, and the scale is close to 3.967 billion yuan in 2015.
Although the announcement did not explain too much about the reason for the decline in net profit, judging from the specific performance, it is likely that the sales of GAC Group's two "profit cows" - GAC Honda and GAC Toyota will continue to decline in 2023.
Guangqi Honda's sales in 2023 will be 640,500 units, down 13.6% from 2022, which has been declining for four consecutive years, while GAC Toyota's sales in 2023 will fall below one million units, reaching 950,000 units, a decrease of 5.47%.
As a result, the revenue of the two major brands declined, with GAC Honda's revenue of 93.528 billion yuan, a decrease of 18.75% over the previous year, and GAC Toyota's revenue of 152.869 billion yuan, a decrease of 6.52%.
At the same time, GAC Mitsubishi, another major joint venture brand of the group, will usher in a restructuring in 2023, and the company said that it has made key progress, and will help GAC Aion increase production capacity and solve the bottleneck problem of production capacity after completion.
To sum up, although GAC Group's sales volume and revenue will hit a new high in 2023, and the new energy transformation performance is also good, the sales volume of joint venture brands will decrease, affecting the group's net profit in 2023 to plummet.
However, the Group has sufficient cash reserves. As of the end of 2023, cash and cash equivalents were 45.865 billion yuan, an increase of 8.286 billion yuan over last year.
For the 2024 plan, Chairman Zeng Qinghong still set a target of 10% sales growth. Although this is in line with the original 2023 target, it has not been achieved in 2023.
More critically, Zeng Qinghong's term at the helm is also about to expire.
GAC's term as chairman is about to expire
Zeng Qinghong, the current chairman of GAC Group, has led GAC Group for 8 years and is also an old man who has been working in the automotive industry for more than 40 years.
Zeng Qinghong, who was born as a maintenance worker, started from the front line, and successively worked as an auto mechanic, technician, and technical engineer in Guangzhou Automobile Repair Factory, Guangzhou Bus Factory, Guangzhou Golden BMW Bus and other companies.
Later, in 1999, Zeng Qinghong became the executive vice president of GAC Honda, and in 2005, he became the vice chairman and general manager of GAC Group. And in 2016, when the former chairman Zhang Fangyou retired at the age of 60, Zeng Qinghong took over as the chairman of the group.
At that time, it was widely believed that Zeng Qinghong belonged to a "high-level pick-up". Because in 2016, GAC Group has completed the A-share and H-share listings, and has also completed the creation of its own brand, with annual sales of 1.65 million vehicles, an increase higher than the industry average, leading all state-owned car companies.
After Zeng Qinghong took office, on this basis, he helped the group to conform to the trend of the times and complete the initial transformation of new energy.
On the one hand, the group's overall sales exceeded 2.5 million vehicles, and its revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan many times.
On the other hand, the sales volume of the independent new energy brand Aion has increased from 40,000 units in 2019 to 480,000 units in 2023, and the sales volume has exceeded 40,000 units for 10 consecutive months.
In addition, GAC Aion's valuation will reach 103.239 billion yuan in 2022, becoming the most successful representative of the transformation of traditional car companies. Recently, Gu Huinan, general manager of Aion, also said that the company is looking for the right time to go public.
The group's revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan and completed the new energy transformation, and Zeng Qinghong's achievements during his leadership were not bad.
So looking back now, the group did not let Zeng Qinghong retire at the same age as the previous chairman when Zeng Qinghong turned 60 in 2021, but chose to sign a contract renewal and lead the group for another 3 years, which is indeed the right bet.
But the contract is set to expire in July, and Mr. Zeng is 63 years old, with only two years left before the legal retirement age of 65.
At the same time, the new energy transformation, which is one of Zeng Qinghong's achievements during his tenure, has declined at the beginning of this year.
In the first quarter of this year, Aion's cumulative sales were 74,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 11.98%, and the monthly sales volume came to about 20,000-30,000 units, and in February, it fell below 20,000 units, only 16,700 units.
In other words, although the transformation results in 2023 are outstanding, the start of 2024 will be unfavorable, and the next sales pressure will only be greater.
Coupled with the group's sales growth target of 10% in 2024, the sales volume of joint venture brands is gradually shrinking, which means that in order to achieve this goal, it is more dependent on the sales growth of its own brands such as new energy.
Regardless of whether Zeng Qinghong renews his contract again, 2024 will be very critical for GAC Group, especially for new energy brands.
Whether traditional car companies can take advantage of the victory after the transformation will be revealed this year.
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