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SAIC Motor, the largest automaker in China, said its first-year net profit tumbled 48.1% from a year earlier to 6.91 billion yuan.
Earlier data had shown that SAIC’s first-quarter profit was 5.516 billion yuan. That left its second-quarter profit at 1.39 billion yuan, slumping 75% from the previous quarter.
The Covid resurgence had severe impacts on the automobile supply chain, leading to a sharp drop in its sales, and meanwhile, the tight auto chip supply and surging prices of material such as power batteries have hurt its gross profit margin, the company said.
Shanghai-based automobile supply chain companies suffered severe disruption in April due to the impact of the Covid outbreaks. SAIC car output and sales reached 158,000 units and 167,000 units in April, respectively, slumping by more than 60% from a year earlier. In the first half of the year, SACI sold 2.23 million units of cars, falling slightly by 2.74% from a year earlier.
SAIC’s gross profit margin stood at 9.45% in the first half of the year, falling by 0.08 percentage points from 2021.
SAIC’s controlling shareholder in May announced a plan to increase holdings of 1.6 – 3.2 billion yuan worth of SAIC shares. By the end of June, it has increased holdings of 83.243 million shares, or 0.71% of the stock capital, worth a total of 1.359 billion yuan, equivalent to 85% of the planned amount