Chinese automakers suffer from declining market in H1

The Chinese auto market has not fired back up to the table in the first half of the year, as The Paper analyzed Sept 6.

A total of 12.37 million cars were sold in Chinese domestic market in the first half of the year, dropping by 11.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

The decline was reflected in financial reports of 17 domestic listed automakers. Only two of the 17 passenger carmakers posted net profit increases in the first half. Five had still been at a loss and 13 saw shrinking net profits, which fell by more than 100 percent for three of them.

Among the 17 carmakers, Changan Automobile suffered most from the deficits of 2.24 billion yuan ($313.14 million), partly attributed to the falling sales of Changan Ford. With 367.92 billion yuan, SAIC Motor Corp topped the list for net profits, but its profits were still down by 27.49 percent year-on-year, the first time in 10 years it had shrunk since SAIC was listed.

Amid the gloomy trend, BYD and BJEV handed in decent results, posting 203.6 percent and 9.7 percent increases in net profits respectively.

But subsidies on new-energy carmakers accounted for 48.8 percent of BYD's net profit as well as even over 100 percent of that of BJEV, if including all nonrecurring profits and losses such as subsidies.