AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/07 Report--

On April 6, there was news in the market that SAIC had announced a pay cut and started planning layoffs in early April, which triggered a large number of posts and comments. The source pointed out that SAIC will cut the salary of all its employees, including 20% for senior executives, 15% for ministers and 10% for employees. In addition, SAIC Research and Development Institute will also face pay cuts and layoffs, and even new graduates who have joined for less than a year may be laid off.

In response to the news that SAIC is going to cut salaries and planned layoffs, the relevant head of SAIC said: "We have not received any news of wage cuts and layoffs."

In addition, according to the Interface News report, a number of sources close to SAIC confirmed that SAIC did announce that it would start a pay cut, but it had not yet been formally implemented. "executives are cut by 20% and ministers by 15%. 10% of employees is one of several pay adjustment programs, which has not been decided yet." Another person familiar with the matter said that in addition to the pay cut, SAIC will also implement performance reviews at the same time, and the percentage of salary cuts for unqualified employees will be even higher. A number of SAIC insiders revealed that SAIC may start to lay off workers in disguise, and senior managers and above can buy out their seniority.

On February 22 this year, SAIC GM reported that it was preparing for major layoffs due to falling sales and planned to buy out employees over the age of 45, but the news was quickly refuted by officials. SAIC GM said: "the relevant content is false information."

So far, SAIC has not released its annual results report for 2022. According to SAIC's third quarterly report for 2022, SAIC's total operating revenue in the first three quarters of last year was 527.409 billion yuan, down 4.58 percent from the same period last year, while its mother's net profit was 12.649 billion yuan, down 37.84 percent from the same period last year, the lowest level in nearly five years.

From the data analysis, although SAIC Group profit is still more than 10 billion yuan, but the decline is relatively large, at the same time, SAIC Group is also facing huge sales pressure. According to the data, SAIC's annual sales volume in 2022 was 5.3026 million vehicles, down 2.94% from the same period last year, marking its fourth consecutive year of negative growth. SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC General Motors both showed declining trends to varying degrees in their two major profits, SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC GM. Retail sales of SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC GM were 1.2435 million and 1.0368 million respectively in 2022, according to retail data. It fell 14.7% and 18.8% respectively from the same period last year.

After entering 2023, SAIC's sales did not improve due to the price war in the car market and other factors. According to the latest figures, SAIC's cumulative sales in the first quarter of 2023 were 891100, down 26.99 per cent from a year earlier. According to the plan, SAIC's annual sales in 2023 are now 6 million, which means that SAIC's completion rate in the first quarter of this year is only 14.86 per cent. In terms of brand segmentation, SAIC Volkswagen sold 226300 vehicles, down 31.67% from the same period last year; SAIC GM sold 186000 vehicles, down 32.26% from the same period last year, that is to say, both joint venture brands declined in the first quarter. In addition, SAIC GM Wuling also showed a significant downward trend, with first-quarter sales falling 41 per cent year-on-year to 193000 vehicles.

Reviewing the changes of the car market in 2022, the biggest change is the rapid increase in the market share of domestic independent brands. According to the data, the market share of domestic independent brands reached 50% for the first time in 2022, while the market share of joint venture brands with strong performance in the past was gradually carved up, mainly due to the rapid transformation of the auto market to new energy vehicles. The transformation of domestic independent brands is fast, while the transformation of joint venture brands is slow. At present, SAIC has two major new energy brands, Zhiji Automobile and Feifan Automobile, but the sales performance of the two brands is very mediocre. The latest data show that SAIC Group sold 142000 new energy vehicles in the first quarter of 2023, down 26% from the same period last year. It is one of the few vehicle companies that have seen a decline in new energy sales, of which Zhiji sold 3765 vehicles. By contrast, the federation expects manufacturers of new energy vehicles to grow by 25% year-on-year in the first quarter.

SAIC officials said that the company's overall sales will continue to accelerate in April, achieving month-on-month overall growth, including Zhiji LS7, Feifan F7, MG7 and Wuling colorful fruit models have been launched for delivery. However, according to the analysis of SAIC's first-quarter sales data, it is difficult for SAIC to achieve its sales target of 6 million vehicles this year, and in terms of new energy, SAIC still has a long way to go to rely on Zhiji and Feifan brands to achieve blood recovery.

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