SAIC Motor's Jan.-Apr. sales in 2019 drop 16.8%

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- SAIC Motor sold 456,826 vehicles in April, suffering a double-digit decrease of 19.73%, the automaker announced on May 7. This was the eighth month in a row recording year-on-year negative growth.

For the first four months, the China’s biggest auto group saw its year-to-date (YTD) sales slide 16.8% over a year earlier to 1,989,831 units. Compared with the 15.88% drop in Q1 sales, the decline has been slightly enlarged. 

Aside from SAIC Maxus and SAIC Motor-CP, the other subsidiaries all posted sales shrink in April. The top 3 companies by the monthly sales were still SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM and SAIC-GM-Wuling. However, by the end of April, all of them have been stuck in year-on-year drop for eight consecutive months.

Negative growth also reflected on model’s Jan.-Apr. sales performance. SAIC-GM-Wuling’s YTD sales faced a decline up to 26.53%. Nevertheless, SAIC Motor-CP achieved a substantial growth of 27.82%.

SAIC Motor was still China’s most profitable automaker in the first quarter of 2019. Earlier this month, it released its Q1 report, saying the group’s net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company fell 15% over the year ago to RMB8.251 billion. Meanwhile, SAIC Motor also earned RMB200.192 billion in quarterly operating income through March, down by 16.18% over the previous year.