AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)03/09 Report--

On March 8, Dongfeng Group issued a "profit warning" announcement, which stated that the company's board of directors considered that, based on the preliminary assessment of the latest unaudited comprehensive management accounts of the group for the 12 months ended December 31, 2023 and the information currently available, compared with the net profit of 10.265 billion yuan for the 12 months ended December 31, 2022 The Company expects that the net profit and loss of homing for the 12 months ended 31 December 2023 will not exceed 4 billion yuan.

According to the announcement, the board of directors believes that there are two main reasons for the performance changes in this period. One is that the market space of joint venture non-luxury brands has been significantly squeezed and product prices continue to decline. In 2023, the sales volume of the group's joint venture business fell by 16%, and profits dropped significantly; second, the group's new energy business is still in the strategic investment period, and investment in new energy, intelligent R & D, brand and channel construction continues to increase in 2023.

According to the official website, Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd. is a super-large automobile enterprise under the direct management of the central government, the predecessor of which was founded in the second automobile factory in 1969. In September 1992, it changed its name to Dongfeng Motor Company. In September 2003, the headquarters moved from Shiyan, Hubei to Wuhan. In November 2017, it changed its name to Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd. At present, most of the Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd. are joint venture brands, the main joint venture brands include Dongfeng Nissan, Dongfeng Honda, Dongfeng Infiniti, Shenlong Automobile, in which the joint venture brand is the main source of Dongfeng automobile sales; independent brands include Dongfeng Lantu, Dongfeng Fengshen, Dongfeng New Energy, Dongfeng Hong, and so on.

Previous data show that in 2023, Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. accumulated sales of 2.0882 million vehicles, down about 15.27% from the same period last year; parent company Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd. accumulated car sales of 2.4212 million vehicles, down about 17% from the same period last year; subsidiary Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd. accumulated car sales of 151300 vehicles, up 15.78% from the same period last year.

In terms of brand segmentation, the cumulative sales of Dongfeng Nissan (including Dongfeng Infiniti and Qichen) in 2023 were 723100 vehicles, down 21.53% from the same period last year; another Japanese joint venture brand Dongfeng Honda sold 604800 vehicles, down 8.54% from the same period last year. Dongfeng Nissan passenger cars are mainly composed of three major brands: Nissan, Infiniti and Qichen. The models on sale include Xuanyi, Teana, Qijun, Xiaoke, Bluebird, Tuda, Jinke, Loulan, etc., but the main selling models are only Xuanyi, Teana and Xiaoke, but at present, these traditional fuel vehicles have lost their advantage in the Chinese market. As for Dongfeng Honda, it faces the same difficulties, including the lack of product power after Huanxin and the slow progress of electrification.

In addition to the above two major brands, the decline of DPCA is even more serious, with total sales of 80300 vehicles in 2023, a year-on-year drop of 35.81%, making it the largest joint venture brand under Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd., including 45780 Dongfeng Peugeot, 28180 Dongfeng Citroen and 6385 Dongfeng Fukang. The reason for the sharp decline in sales of DPCA is that French cars do not have a strong sense of existence in the domestic market on the one hand, and slow iteration of product updates on the other.

As for the reasons for the decline in sales of Dongfeng Group's brands, "Automotive Industry concern" believes that in addition to the sharp decline in domestic traditional fuel vehicle market share, the main reason is the slow progress of the group's new energy vehicle products.

The decline of the joint venture brand forces Dongfeng Motor to think about the breakthrough in the context of new energy. In April 2023, Dongfeng Motor proposed a "three-year action of transformation and upgrading" to the electrification process. According to the plan, by 2024, Dongfeng's main independent brands will be 100% electric; by 2025, the annual sales of its own brands and joint venture brands will each reach 2 million, when the sales of new energy vehicles of independent brands will account for 50% of their own brands and 70% of their own passenger car brands. To this end, Dongfeng plans to invest 50 billion yuan over three years to speed up the landing of the above project. However, combined with Dongfeng Motor's sales performance of new energy vehicles in 2023, the strategy still has a long way to go.

Data show that for the whole of 2023, easyit New Energy fell 25.08 per cent year on year to 74500 vehicles, while Lantu car sales increased by 159.08 per cent year on year to 50300 vehicles. Although Lantu Automobile has increased significantly compared with the same period last year, it is still a far cry from the new car-building forces in the mainstream of the car market, and this growth is tantamount to a drop in the bucket for the decline in sales of the entire Dongfeng Group.

"fuel vehicle sales decline, slow electric transformation" is not only a difficult problem faced by traditional car companies, but also an urgent problem to be solved by Dongfeng Group shares. For Dongfeng, in the environment of fierce competition, we should reduce our dependence on joint venture brands as soon as possible and catch up with the opportunity of the rapid development of domestic new energy or the key to its transformation and breakthrough. However, some people in the industry believe that in the highly competitive pure electricity market, Dongfeng still has a long way to go to rely on new energy to achieve growth.

For this year's sales forecast, the Board initially set the Group's annual sales target at 2.7 million vehicles, an increase of about 29% compared with 2023. Among them, passenger vehicle sales target is 2.28 million, an increase of about 30.7% over 2023; commercial vehicle sales target is 420000, an increase of about 20.7% over 2023.

The latest sales data show that from January to February of 2024, Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. accumulated car sales of 331020 vehicles, an increase of about 26.2% over the same period last year; parent company Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. accumulated car sales of 20099 vehicles from January to February, an increase of about 41.5% over the same period last year; and subsidiary Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd. accumulated car sales of 23810 from January to February, an increase of 28.8% over the same period last year.

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