BAIC Motor plans to be listed in A-share market

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Currently, BAIC Motor released an announcement in HKEX that the board decided to submit resolution on initial public offering and listing of A-shares to interim general shareholders meeting and seek for approval.

The latest news show that it is BAIC Motor as a whole, rather than BJEV alone, that plans to be listed in A-share market. One senior analyst in auto industry told reporters that although the growth this year is lagging behind with the data of last year,the whole industry has potential developments in the future. The semi-annual report data shows that BAIC Motor’s revenue reaches RMB 66.74b in the reporting period with a year-on-year growth of 36.09%. Net profit attributable to shareholders reaches RMB 986m with a year-on-year decline of 59.12%.

Currently, BAIC Motor contains four business departments including the self-owned Beijing brand, Beijing Benz, Beijing Hyundai and Fujian Benz. The main reasons for the large profit decline of BAIC Motor involve a year-on-year sales decline of Beijing brand and the small sales volume of Beijing Hyundai. It’s analyzed that although the sales pressure for Beijing brand and Beijing Hyundai may be eased in the coming busy season, but it may not last long since Beijing brand lacks competitive power among all self-independent brands. “Under the current market environment, good self-independent brands will become better and bad brand will go worse. Little time is left for the underachievers to come up.”

It seems that BAIC Motor is ambitious in producing intelligent vehicles. It released announcement on October 16th that it would re-sign a strategic cooperation agreement with Baidu to conduct cooperation in several areas including self-driving, information products, cloud services and Baidu security AI. The two sides will cooperate on the basis of Baidu Apollo plan and BAIC vehicle platforms to achieve the mass-production of L3-featured and L4- featured models before 2021 with artificial intelligence as the key technology.

But professionals are pessimistic on the above cooperation. It is analyzed that other domestic auto companies are also cooperating with Internet companies or strengthening their R&D abilities. But intelligent vehicles are still lagging behind consumers’ expectation. Besides, many uncertain factors exist in the process.