AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)03/22 Report--

Following the first-tier luxury brand BBA have announced last year's results, we can see that affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, the global automobile market has been significantly affected. Judging from the results disclosed by the three car companies, Mercedes-Benz still had the highest revenue last year, equivalent to the sum of BMW and Audi Group, and became the top seller last year.

Specific disclosure of the results show that although Mercedes-Benz's revenue and sales have shown the most obvious decline, but in the difficult 2020 of the only car company to achieve profit growth, cumulative profits have soared. In terms of sales, all three automakers outperformed the 15 per cent decline in the global car market.

Mercedes Benz

Mercedes-Benz, as the "leader" of first-tier luxury brands, also reflects the strength of the company. According to its financial report for 2020, the group's revenue was 154.3 billion euros (about 1.193742 trillion yuan), down 11% from a year earlier, and profit before interest and tax was 6.6 billion euros (about 51.06 billion yuan), up 53% from a year earlier.

Mercedes-Benz CEO Conlinson said the group's profit was mainly due to the group's strong performance in a wide range of cost control and cash reserve measures and all business sectors.

The decline in revenue was mainly affected by the epidemic, and the total sales of Daimler Group declined. The group's total sales of passenger and commercial vehicles last year were 2.84 million, down 15 per cent from a year earlier. Of this total, Mercedes-Benz passenger cars and light commercial vehicles sold 2.462 million vehicles, down 13 percent from the same period last year, with a turnover of 98.6 billion euros and a profit before interest and tax of 5.172 billion euros.

Despite this, Daimler's sales in China continued to grow, with Mercedes-Benz selling 774000 new cars in China, up 11.7% from a year earlier, and the region remained the largest single market for Mercedes-Benz passenger cars for six consecutive years. Among them, Beijing Mercedes-Benz brought 1.33 billion euros (more than 10 billion yuan) to Mercedes-Benz, which does not count the profits of imported models, which shows that Mercedes-Benz has relatively considerable profits, while Mercedes-Benz has maintained the highest sales performance in China.

BMW

BMW Group is second only to Mercedes-Benz in overall performance. According to the group's financial report last year, the group's revenue was 98.99 billion euros (about 765.836 billion yuan), down 5% from 2019. Pre-tax profit fell 27% to 5.222 billion euros (about 40.4 billion yuan).

It is understood that BMW Group delivered a total of 2.33 million vehicles in the global market last year, down 8.4% from the same period last year, of which BMW's sales were 202.8, down 7.1% from the same period last year. Despite the year-on-year decline in sales, BMW Group still achieved a breakthrough in China, the largest sales market, with a total delivery of 777400 BMW and MINI vehicles for the whole year, an increase of 7.4% over the same period last year, accounting for 33.4% of the total global sales, which is also the best sales record since BMW Group entered the Chinese market in 1994.

Judging from the data, it is a bit surprising that BMW, which has far higher revenue than Audi, has seen a higher decline in profits than Audi. CEO Zippze of BMW Group explained that BMW is accelerating the transformation and hopes to achieve the transformation of the group through higher investment. According to the data, BMW invested 5.689 billion euros in research and development in 2020, accounting for about 6.3 percent of the total compared with the previous year, while Mercedes-Benz spent 8.6 billion euros, down 11 percent from last year. Audi's share of R & D costs fell to 7.3 per cent of revenue in 2020. However, we can see that the transformation of electric cars has become an important direction for the three car companies.

Audi

Audi's performance last year was slightly lower than that of the two companies, with revenues well below those of Mercedes-Benz and BMW and the lowest sales among the three. Audi Group's total sales revenue last year was 49.973 billion euros (about 386.531 billion yuan), down 10.2 percent from a year earlier, according to financial data.

Audi said the decline in revenue was mainly affected by the COVID-19 epidemic and a sharp drop in vehicle sales. Of this total, revenue from car sales fell to 33.382 billion euros (about 258.203 billion yuan), while Audi made a pre-tax profit of 4.187 billion euros (32.386 billion yuan) in fiscal 2020, down 19.8 percent from 2019.

In terms of sales, Audi delivered a total of 1.6928 million new cars worldwide in 2020, down about 8 per cent from the same period last year. It has also benefited from the growth of its brand in the Chinese market, which has not led to a further decline in sales. Audi sold 727000 vehicles in China last year, up 5.4% from a year earlier, making Audi the lowest growth performance among the three groups in China, according to the data.

Throughout the performance of the BBA brand declined in 2020, mainly affected by the epidemic, even Mercedes-Benz, which achieved profit growth, was realized under the measure of reducing cost and increasing efficiency. But on the whole, it still outperformed the average performance of the global auto market, and all three companies also had positive expectations for their performance in fiscal year 2021. Mercedes-Benz expects its profit margin to increase to 8-10% this year. BMW is expected to increase to 6%, 8%, and Audi plans to achieve 7%, 9%. At the same time, for the future market, car companies have invested a certain proportion of revenue in the transformation, which means that the transformation of car companies is forced to burn eyebrows.

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