AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/11 Report--

China's passenger car sales fell 5.6 per cent in April from a year earlier, narrowing sharply from a month earlier, while a number of car companies achieved sales growth in April, ushering in a rebound after the epidemic. Sales in the domestic passenger car market reached 1.429 million in April, down 5.6 percent from a year earlier and up 36.6 percent from a month earlier, while cumulative sales from January to April were 4.445 million, down 32.7 percent from a year earlier, according to a report by the Federation of passengers.

With the resumption of work and production of domestic enterprises in April, the national and local governments have responded to the call to issue policies to promote automobile consumption, coupled with the consumption willingness that consumers have accumulated since the first quarter, which has gradually been transformed into real purchase demand, so new car retail resumed obviously in April.

According to the ranking of car sales, the top five are FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC-Volkswagen, SAIC General Motors, Geely Automobile and Dongfeng Nissan. Changan Automobile has the biggest increase, while SAIC GM Wuling has slipped sharply. In addition, the luxury car market continues to prosper, with luxury car retail up 16% year-on-year in April, while brilliance BMW and Beijing Mercedes-Benz made it into the top 15.

Volkswagen's share is over 20%.

Volkswagen's two joint ventures in China, FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC-Volkswagen, continued to maintain a strong performance, with sales far outpacing their competitors, with FAW-Volkswagen selling 162300 vehicles in April, up 11.1 per cent from a year earlier, and SAIC-Volkswagen selling 129200 vehicles, down 8.1 per cent from a year earlier. In terms of market share, the two car companies together account for 20.4%.

FAW-Volkswagen returned to positive growth, mainly due to the continuous development of Volkswagen brand, Audi brand price exchange, Jetta brand increment and other factors. After the launch of a variety of products in the SUV market, FAW-Volkswagen's newly launched Jetta brand penetrated into the low-end car market, thus realizing different market segments of the three major brands and further helping to increase sales. The Audi brand sold 55900 vehicles in April, while the Jetta brand sold 13500.

SAIC-Volkswagen's market competitiveness has weakened. After the announcement of the Passat results of the China Baoyan collision test, SAIC-Volkswagen sales have declined for many months in a row, which has greatly affected SAIC-Volkswagen's public opinion environment and performance. In terms of sales volume, the market size gap between SAIC-Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen is also further widening.

In addition, SAIC-Volkswagen took the lead in corporate strategic adjustment in 2020, and the marginalized "SAIC Skoda" implemented the measures of brand positioning decentralization and product price reduction, in order to save the performance after repositioning.

Three independent car companies are on the list.

Under the impact of the cold winter of the car market and the epidemic situation, the living environment of independent brands is even more difficult. In April, only three independent car companies entered the list, namely Geely Automobile, Changan Automobile and Great Wall Motor.

Geely ranks fourth among Chinese automakers, with sales of more than 100000 vehicles in April. After months of decline, Geely finally saw year-on-year growth. However, Geely sold a total of 311495 vehicles in the first four months of this year, 22% of its annual sales target of 1.41 million vehicles, and the next target completion rate is difficult. Geely owns Geely brands, new energy products and Lecker brands, of which Lecker sold 10156 vehicles in April, up 12% from a year earlier.

Changan Automobile has recovered sales due to the promotion of CS75 models. Changan car sales in April were 66000, up 74.5 per cent from a year earlier. Among them, 20, 000 CS75 models were sold that month, ranking second on the SUV list. According to the plan of Changan Automobile, the new energy sector will continue to be developed in the future, and the UNI gravity series will be launched at the same time, and the first UNI-T compact SUV will be launched in June.

Great Wall sold 63400 vehicles in April, down 3.3% from a year earlier and ranked eighth on the list of car companies. Affected by the epidemic, Great Wall has lowered its full-year sales target to 1.02 million vehicles in 2020 from the previous 1.11 million vehicles, and its net profit to 4.05 billion yuan from 4.7 billion yuan.

Luxury cars continue to prosper

Two luxury car companies, brilliance BMW and Beijing Mercedes-Benz, were on the list in April. Among them, brilliance BMW sold 51500 vehicles in April, up 15.5% from a year earlier, ranking 13th; Beijing Mercedes-Benz sold 47900 vehicles in April, up 0.6% from a year earlier, ranking 14th.

The HKIFA believes that the demand for high-end purchases of upgraded consumption has picked up rapidly, and some luxury cars have continued to be reduced and suppressed by price, so luxury car retail sales increased by 16% in April compared with the same period last year, continuing to reverse the trend.

In fact, when the passenger car market continued to decline last year, the luxury car market was also strong, growing by 10% for the whole year. Under the stock competition, luxury cars will continue to reduce dimensionality, and the price war will continue.

Conclusion: from the perspective of the industry pattern, the concentration of the market will continue to improve, and weak brands will face elimination. In the first 15 months of April, the market share of automobile companies reached 80.1%, a record high, up 2.8 percentage points from 77.3% in March. In the future, the "Matthew effect" in China's car market will be more prominent, the concentration will be higher and higher, strong brands will continue to grow, luxury brands will continue to prosper, and some marginal brands will struggle.

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