On the evening of March 28, GAC Group released its 2023 financial report. During the reporting period, the Group's total sales revenue was approximately RMB502.303 billion, down 2.39% year-on-year, sales revenue was approximately RMB129.706 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of approximately 17.62%, net profit attributable to the parent company was approximately RMB4.429 billion, down 44.48% year-on-year, and basic earnings per share was approximately RMB0.42, down 45.45% year-on-year.
The company will pay a total dividend of about 1.57 billion yuan for the whole year, with a dividend payout rate of nearly 36%. On the same day, GAC Group announced for the first time that it planned to repurchase A shares and H shares totaling 5~1 billion yuan.
At present, China's auto industry is facing a series of severe challenges such as rising competition, disorderly competition at low prices, and the pain of joint venture brand transformation, and we can feel the pressure in GAC Group's 2023 financial report data. In this regard, the company did not evade, after the release of the financial report, the group leaders on the outside world of general concern to the five major issues, one by one to give a clear response.
First of all, in response to the dividend and share repurchase measures, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC Group, said that the company, as a large joint-stock automobile enterprise group listed on A+H shares as a whole, made the above decision based on comprehensive consideration of the company's operating conditions, strategic planning, capital needs, shareholder requirements and other factors. Since its listing in 2012, GAC's dividend ratio has remained above 30% over the years.
At this stage, the repurchase of shares is also a common operation of listed companies - the company's stock price is currently undervalued, and the repurchase at this time will help increase the value of each share, optimize the company's capital structure, and enhance market confidence. It is reported that GAC Group's A-share repurchase will be used for employee equity incentives and employee stock ownership.
Secondly, as for how GAC Group can accelerate the layout of overseas markets, Zeng Qinghong said: "Exporting and even developing overseas localized production will be an important increment for the development of Chinese automobile enterprises in the future, and it will also be an important direction for GAC in the next few years." "In 2023, GAC Group will export 75,800 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of nearly 130%, of which 55,000 will be sold overseas by its own brands, and the market layout of 41 countries and regions has been completed, and the export of complete vehicles and local production will be initially realized. The company has laid out a number of assembly plants in many countries and regions in Africa and Southeast Asia, among which Nigeria, Tunisia and other places have achieved the first batch of vehicles off the assembly line.
But he also pointed out: "Chinese cars going overseas will go through three stages: 'going out, going in, and going up'. Previously, GAC lagged behind in the 'going out' stage, and now in the 'going out' stage, we must speed up the construction of overseas factories and parts, strive to catch up, and strive to achieve a leading position in the 'going up' stage, so as to build GAC into a global brand. GAC Group will implement the brand strategy of 'One GAC Leading, Twin Brands Driven' overseas, seize opportunities in overseas markets, and work hard. ”
In 2024, GAC's overseas sales will focus on key markets such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Mexico, and plans to enter 10 new countries, including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, New Zealand, and Finland. At the same time, we will promote the investment and construction of overseas factories in Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand and other places to strengthen the implementation of localized production.
The Group has set itself a small goal of introducing 14 self-owned brand models to overseas markets this year and aiming for overseas sales of more than 150,000 units, which will reach 500,000 units by 2030.
Third, in the face of the different pace of switching between oil and electricity at home and abroad, and the pain of transformation of joint venture brands, GAC Group's view is that new energy vehicles must be the trend of the times, but fuel vehicles are still the mainstream.
Feng Xingya, general manager of GAC Group, said that at present, the performance of GAC and Guangben is still strong, relying on the advantages of energy-saving vehicles, product quality and brand service capabilities, the two joint ventures achieved steady development last year; at the same time, Toyota and Honda are also vigorously investing in the research and development of electrification technology and products, in the transition stage of the past two years, GAC is very willing to provide all-round support from technology research and development to transformation and upgrading, and fully promote the two companies out of the "counter-cyclical curve". "We will increase the feedback of independent research and development to joint ventures, provide a common platform to achieve joint development, fully support the development of joint venture brands, and accelerate the development of electrification and intelligence. ”
In addition, how GAC responds to the price war has also become a topic of focus from the outside world. It is undeniable that the group's profit will decline in 2023, and the intensification of terminal price competition is one of the main reasons.
Feng Xingya expressed his attitude towards the price war in three sentences: "First, price is used for positioning, not for fighting. Second, value is used to fight wars. Third, costs are used to make a profit. The three roles of price, value and cost are different. Because the price war means to reduce the price, and reducing the price means that you have changed the positioning of the product again, it will bring a series of problems, what should the original customers do? What should the residual value of the second-hand car do in the future? Now I am happy to buy, when the second-hand car sells the residual value, the second-hand residual value cannot come up, and there are many drawbacks. Fighting a price war for a long time is not conducive to fighting a value war, and it will enter a low-price competition strategy for a long time, which is not the path we want to take. ”
Next, GAC Group will continue to develop new products, provide good services, and win by quality through value competition, and get out of this misdirection.
Finally, Zeng Qinghong also talked about the hot information of the industry that will be assessed separately for the new energy business of the three major automobile central enterprises. He believes that there will be corresponding policies for reducing and loosening the burden on local state-owned enterprises in the future. "We hope that it will be a sound and systematic mechanism that can help support the development of new energy in state-owned enterprises. For example, how to make the capital market better support the development of state-owned enterprises, encourage and support private funds to invest in the development of the new energy industry, there is investment, there will be technology. With a good mechanism and the support of market-oriented funds, I believe that we can integrate the advantages of private enterprises and state-owned assets in terms of system, process and technology to invest in and support the comprehensive development of the new energy vehicle industry. ”
Shuidi Auto believes that although GAC Group's performance indicators in 2023 have fluctuated, overall, the company has still achieved high-quality development.
On the one hand, GAC Group has a solid market foundation, with annual automobile production and sales of 2.5288 million and 2.505 million respectively, a year-on-year increase of 1.97% and 2.92% respectively, ranking fifth among domestic automobile enterprise groups in terms of production and sales scale, with a market share of about 8.32%. Among them, the sales volume of its own brand reached nearly 890,000 units, and the production and sales volume reached a record high: GAC passenger car sales exceeded 400,000 units, and GAC Aion sales reached 480,000 units, an increase of 77% over the same period of the previous year, ranking among the top three new energy vehicles in China.
It should be pointed out that last year's GAC Mitsubishi restructuring led to a one-time loss of 2.86 billion yuan for the group, excluding this item, the overall performance level of GAC Group in 2023 is actually comparable to the industry.
On the other hand, the Group plans for the future and builds a moat of technology, ecology and vertical industrial chains. According to the financial report, GAC Group will invest nearly 8.4 billion yuan in R&D in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 28.53%, and make breakthroughs in the in-depth layout of the new energy and intelligent networked vehicle industry chain. By the end of 2023, there will be more than 17,000 patent applications, including more than 7,000 invention patent applications.
In the field of energy conservation and new energy, GAC has built a full-chain layout from upstream mineral resources to downstream charging and swapping stations around the goal of building an "electricity + battery" smart energy ecosystem, and has successfully realized the self-development and self-production of new energy "three electrics".
In the field of intelligence, GAC Group's new vehicle-cloud integrated centralized computing electronic and electrical architecture "Xingling Architecture" has been mass-produced on Haobo GT, and the company has accelerated the advancement of autonomous driving, and the company has now possessed R&D and application capabilities from L2 to L4 levels, and has become the first batch of enterprises to obtain L3 autonomous driving road test licenses.
In the field of forward-looking technology, GAC Flying Car GOVE has achieved its first flight in the world, with a total of more than 300 flight verifications, and plans to start demonstration operation in 2025 and launch a full-chain three-dimensional smart travel service in the Greater Bay Area in 2027.
As Zeng Qinghong said, GAC Group has resolutely launched a "concerted effort, expansion of increments, quality and efficiency improvement", and seven major sectors, including R&D, vehicles, parts, energy and ecology, internationalization, commerce and travel, investment and finance, work together and go hand in hand. The company has stabilized its position in the second half of the competition and has shown strong development tenacity.
No matter how many challenges lie ahead, GAC Group's goal is clear - to actively transform and move towards the goal of "trillion GAC".