10 figures analyze 2019 China's auto sales joy and sorrow

By the economic and trade friction, environmental protection standard switch, new energy subsidy slopes and other factors, in the transformation and upgrading of the auto industry, 2019 is under great pressure, China's auto market has suffered an unprecedented two consecutive years of sales decline.

Important events review:

January 13, China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) released the latest data show that in December 2019, China's automobile production and sales were 2,683,000 and 2,658,000 respectively, an increase of 3.5% and 8.2% from the previous year, with production year-on-year growth of 8.1% and a 0.1% year-on-year decline in sales.

In January-December 2019, China's automobile production and sales amounted to 25.721 million units and 25.769 million units respectively, down 7.5% and 8.2% year-on-year, with the rate of decline in production and sales continuing to show a slight narrowing from January-November, and expanding by 3.3 percentage points and 5.4 percentage points from the previous year respectively.

New energy, December production and sales were completed 149,000 and 163,000 units, an increase of 36% and 71.4%, down 30.3% and 27.4% year-on-year.

January to December, the new energy vehicle production and sales were 1.242 million and 1.206 million, down 2.3% and 4% year-on-year. Among them, the production and sales of pure electric vehicles were 877,000 and 834,000, up 10.8% and 5.9% year-on-year, while the production and sales of plug-in hybrid vehicles were 214,000 and 226,000, down 22.9% and 14.7% year-on-year, respectively.

As for the inventory of automobile enterprises, the inventory of automobile enterprises at the beginning of 2019 was 1.159 million units, and the inventory at the end of the year decreased by 77,000 units to 1.082 million units, down 6.6% year-on-year.

Focus:

As a strategic pillar industry of the national economy, the performance of the automobile industry has a self-evident impact on the national economy.

However, the automobile industry, which is in the process of transformation and upgrading, has been subjected to greater pressure due to the economic and trade friction between China and the U.S., switching of environmental protection standards, and the retreat of new energy subsidies, etc. The entire Chinese automobile market has suffered from two consecutive years of declining sales, which has never been seen before.

It is worth mentioning that with the policy intervention, increased consumer attention and the impact of the mobile travel industry, how the future of the auto industry has long been the focus of attention.

Kline Analysis:

Next, Auto Kline will portray the situation and environment of China's auto industry in 2019 and make a basic judgment on 2020 through 10 key data.

I.-0.1% - year-on-year sales growth in December 2019

In December 2019, China's auto sales stood at 2.658 million units, basically the same as the same period of 2018, with a slight year-on-year drop of 0.1%, compared with November, auto sales continued its growth trend, up by 8.2%, which gives hope that the overall auto market will return to growth.

December, double twelve, Christmas activities, as well as some regional auto shows, stimulate consumers to buy cars, consumer potential to a certain extent has been released. In addition, the Chinese New Year in 2020 was earlier than in previous years, which led to the early arrival of the peak sales season, and thus the sales performance continued to maintain a certain growth momentum after November, which also made the overall performance of the fourth quarter better than that of the whole year.

K-line comment: Some companies hide their sales in a low-profile way, while others make life difficult for their dealers.

Two, -8.2% - China's auto sales decline in 2019

In 2019, automobile production and sales were completed 25,721,000 and 25,769,000 units, respectively, with production and sales down 7.5% and 8.2% year-on-year, and production and sales declined from the previous year, respectively, by 4.2 and 5.4 The decline in production and sales was 4.2 and 5.4 percentage points larger than the previous year.

From the data, the pressure on China's auto industry in 2019 has further increased, with production and sales volume and the industry's main economic efficiency indicators showing negative growth. However, from the trend of changes in monthly production and sales announced by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), in 2019, although the monthly sales of the automobile market still showed continuous negative growth, but the second half of the year began to show strong self-recovery, and the cumulative growth rate continued to narrow.

It is not difficult to find that China's auto production and sales situation is gradually improving, but the overall pressure is still greater.

K-line comment: another history.

Three, -4.3% - 17 key automobile enterprises in January-November 2019 operating income year-on-year increase

CAIC data show that the total industrial output value of the 17 key automobile enterprise groups in January-November 2019 amounted to 311,175.58 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 5.3%, that is, a a decrease of 174.75 billion yuan; operating income amounted to 3,630.18 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 4.3%, or a decrease of 162.09 billion yuan; and total profit and tax amounted to 473.57 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 16%, or a decrease of 90.12 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, from January to November this year, the entire Chinese auto sales volume was 23.11 million units, down 9.1 percent year-on-year.

K-line comment: operating pressure, revenue reaction is the biggest.

Four, -9.6% - passenger car sales growth rate

CAA data show that in 2019, passenger car production and sales were 21.36 million units and 21.444 million units, respectively, down 9.2% and 9.6% year-on-year. The proportion of automobile production and sales reached 83% and 83.2% respectively, 3.4 and 1.2 percentage points lower than the proportion of production and sales in the previous year.

Automotive Kline found from the 2006-2019 passenger car sales and growth rate trend chart published by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) that the growth rate of passenger car sales in 2019 has fallen to the bottom since 2006, further reflecting the pressure faced by China's automobile market, especially the passenger car market.

K line comment: passenger cars should lose weight and gain muscle.

V. -10.7% - sedans dragged passenger cars

In 2019, the cumulative sales of sedans amounted to 10,308,000 units, 1,234,000 fewer than the same period in 2018, a year-on-year decline of 10.7%, higher than China's overall automobile sales decline rate of 2.5 percentage points and passenger car sales decline of 1.1 percentage points.

Despite the fact that sedan sales pulled down China's overall auto sales and passenger car sales, they are still the models with the largest market share, accounting for 40% of total auto sales and 48% of passenger car sales, respectively. Therefore, the sedan market is still a must for automakers.

However, China's own brand in the sedan has been poor performance, in China's car sales in the top ten ranking, in addition to Geely Dihao, the rest of the models are foreign brands.

Clearly, in the sedan market, China's own brand vehicles still need to work hard.

K-line comment: the total is down, but the strong are always strong.

VI.-6.3% - SUV sales growth rate

In 2019, the cumulative sales of SUVs amounted to 9.353 million units, down 627,000 units from the same period of 2018, a year-on-year decline of 6.3%, which is lower than China's overall automobile sales decline of 1.9 percentage points and passenger car sales decline of 3.3 percentage points.

From the data, despite the decline in SUV sales, the performance of the three major types of sedans, SUVs and MPVs is still outstanding, and its market share has been equal to that of sedans, accounting for 36.3 percent of total auto sales and 43.6 percent of passenger car sales.

However, as foreign brands SUV models in the Chinese market layout more and more rich, had relied on the SUV dividend to grow up the car companies, is facing a huge challenge to survival.

This also reflects that, although China's own brand vehicles have made qualitative improvements in just a few decades, there is still a gap between them and foreign brands in terms of brand power and product strength, especially the establishment of brand influence, which still takes a long time. Last year, SUV sales growth was mainly due to the growth of German models SUV sales.

K-line comment: Chinese brands are the most injured.

Seven, 132,000 - 2019 passenger car inventory reduction number

Benefiting from the automakers' sober perception of the auto market, car companies did not blindly increase production capacity in the traditional sales season of the Spring Festival, and therefore, the inventory situation has also improved.

The inventory of passenger cars fell from 915,000 units at the beginning of the year to 783,000 units at the end of the year, a year-on-year decline of 14.4 percent, or a reduction of 132,000 units in inventory.

The reduction of inventory, for automobile enterprises, can not only reduce the occupation of funds, resources loss of use, but also to avoid the enterprise to dealers to transfer the pressure, effectively reduce dealer pressure. This is good news for listed car companies.

K line comment: I hope the dealers can also feel quite good.

Eight, -4% - 2019 new energy vehicle sales year-on-year increase

In 2019, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were completed 1.242 million units and 1.206 million units, respectively, a year-on-year decline of 2.3% and 4.0%. Among them, the production of pure electric vehicles completed 1,020,000 units, an increase of 3.4% year-on-year; sales completed 972,000 units, a year-on-year decline of 1.2%; plug-in hybrid vehicle production and sales completed 220,000 units and 232,000 units, a year-on-year decline of 22.5% and 14.5%; production and sales of fuel cell vehicles completed 2,833 units and 2,737 units respectively, a year-on-year increase of 85.5% and 79.2%.

By the impact of subsidy regression, in the second half of 2019, the sales of new energy vehicles showed a sharp decline. This also reflects that new energy vehicles are still immature and rely heavily on subsidies.

It also shows that new energy vehicle products have not met consumer requirements in terms of technological advancement, reliability, durability and other important indicators.

But the development of new energy vehicles can not rely on policy support for a long time, so that the country spends money to pay the bill, but let the consumer accept, active trading consumption. Therefore, new energy vehicle enterprises should do, is in the new energy product technology research and development hard work, promote product iteration and upgrade. And from the development of new energy vehicles in recent years, want to production and sales up, break through the bottleneck of new energy industry technology, improve the commercialization of the popularity of the top priority.

K line comment: rely on subsidies, not good. The tide faded, found that everyone is swimming naked.

Nine, 39.2% - 2019 Chinese brand passenger car share

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) released data showing that in 2019, Chinese brand passenger car sales were 8.407 million units, down 15.8% year-on-year, with a market share of 39.2%, down 2.9% year-on-year. This is also the lowest market share for Chinese passenger car brand sales except for 38.4 percent since 2014.

According to the data, China's branded sedans sold 2.046 million units, down 15.2 percent year-on-year, with a market share of 19.9 percent, down 1.1 percent year-on-year; China's branded SUVs sold 4.92 million units, down 15 percent year-on-year, with a market share of 52.6 percent, down 5.4 percent year-on-year; China's branded MPVs sold 1.041 million units, down 21.6 percent year-on-year China's brand MPV sales amounted to 1.041 million units, down 21.6% year-on-year, with a market share of 75.3%, a year-on-year decline of 1.3%. It is not difficult to find that the decline in market share of Chinese brands is mainly due to the decrease in SUV sales.

Meanwhile, the market share of German and Japanese models increased by 2.8% and 2.5% to 24.2% and 21.3%, respectively, while the market shares of American, Korean and French models declined by varying degrees to 8.9%, 4.7% and 0.6%, respectively.

So the decline in passenger car sales is actually a sharp drop in the sales of China's own-brand models as well as those of models including the U.S., South Korean and French models, in contrast to the performance of German and Japanese models, which not only stood firm, but also captured market share including China's own-brand models with a high momentum.

K-line comment: Chinese auto brands have once again reached the most dangerous time.

Ten, 90.4% - TOP?10 auto groups accounted for the proportion of total auto sales

January-December, auto sales ranked in the top ten enterprise group sales totaled 23,294,000 units, down 6.7% year-on-year, accounting for 90.4% of total auto sales, higher than the same period of the previous year 1.5 percentage points.

However, affected by the downturn in the auto market, the sales performance of the headline automakers was hardly optimistic, despite the concentration of auto sales to the headline automakers.

Data shows that among the top 10 companies in terms of sales, except for FAW Group, Great Wall Motors, Brilliance Group and Chery, which showed year-on-year growth in sales, the sales of SAIC Group, Dongfeng Group, Beijing Automotive and Changan Automobile declined to different degrees.

Worryingly, the increasingly fierce competition and industry concentration will pose an existential threat to companies with smaller auto production and sales, which may face the risk of being eliminated.

For example, Zotye Automobile faces a greater risk of survival with sales of only 153,000 units in 2019, 102,000 fewer than in 2018, a year-on-year decline of 40.1 percent.

In addition, although the decline in China's auto production and sales has continued to narrow since the fourth quarter of 2019, the overall market rebound has been slow, and consumer confidence is still insufficient. 2020, as well as a longer period of time in the future, it may be difficult for the auto market to improve significantly. This will also form a continuous test for listed car companies, dealers and enterprises upstream and downstream of the automotive industry chain.

However, as companies and consumers focus on internet connectivity as well as mobile mobility, it also provides unlimited possibilities for the future development of the automotive industry.

K-line comment: Chinese auto brands, can there be 10 in the end?

This article comes from the author of Auto Home Car Family, and does not represent the viewpoint position of Auto Home.