SAIC Motor reports annual net profit decline

Shanghai-based Chinese automaker SAIC Motor reported annual net profit decline for the first time since its listing in 2011, according to a Wednesday report from Securities Daily.

SAIC's net profit attributable to shareholders dropped 28.9 percent year-on-year to 25.6 billion yuan ($3.63 billion) in 2019, and its revenue registered 826.53 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.88 percent, as per the company's latest annual report.

The automaker sold 6.24 million new vehicles in 2019, a year-on-year fall of 11.5 percent, among which its passenger cars sells suffered a 12.7 percent decline year-on-year to 5.38 million units.

Its three joint ventures, namely Shanghai General Motors Wuling, SAIC-GM, and SAIC Volkswagen, all witnessed falling sales, down 19.42 percent, 18.78 percent and 3.07 percent, respectively, the annual report showed.

The company's first quarter sales in 2020 plunged 55.7 percent year-on-year to about 679,000 units, worse than the country's 42.4 percent decrease in car sales, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed.

On the other hand, the auto maker had a sales boost in new energy vehicles to 185,000 units in 2019, up 30.4 percent compared with a year earlier. Its vehicle export and overseas sales last year jumped 26.5 percent to some 350,000 units, ranking first among its counterparts at home for four years in a row. The company's MG brand sold about 138,000 units overseas, a year-on-year surge of 89.3 percent as the top seller abroad among domestic competitors.