China SUV Leader Great Wall’s Profit Gained 26% In 2021 Amid Auto Industry Upheaval

Rising sales helped net profit at Great Wall Motor, China’s largest home-grown SUV maker, increase by 26% in the 12 months to December, the big non-government controlled-automaker said on Sunday.

Profit rose to 6.78 billion yuan, or $1.06 billion. Operating revenue grew by 32% to 136 billion yuan, or $21 billion, the company said, citing provisional figures. Great Wall also makes pick-up trucks and sedans.

Great Wall announced earlier this month that shipments increased by 15.2% to 1.28 million vehicles last year. Some 750,228 of those were Havals, its SUV model.  Sales of Ora sedans, its electric vehicle centerpiece, more than doubled from a year earlier to 134,028.  The company, which has factories in India, Russia and Thailand, didn’t give a breakdown between domestic and international shipments.  

Great Wall’s business gained at a time when sales in China’s auto market — the world’s largest – expanded by 3.8% to 26 million units last year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

China has emerged as an electric vehicle leader whose growth, technology and heft is shaking up the global auto business. Great Wall has emerged as one of China’s private-sector auto industry leaders around internal combustion engines, but sold almost 137,000 new energy vehicles last year, according to production data posted earlier this month.  The company faces spirited competition from domestic EV-focused upstarts such as NIO, XPeng and Li Auto.

Asia smartphone suppliers such as Xiaomi and Hon Hai Precision, meanwhile, are also looking to expand into smart EVs.  Device makers “see the car as a platform for digital services and high-frequency user engagement,” Shanghai-based auto industry consultant Bill Russo wrote in a report this month. “A new class of smart EV and smart device players are restructuring the traditional automotive value chain as vehicles become smart devices.”

Among U.S. firms, Tesla operates a factory in Shanghai that Reuters has estimated accounts for about half of its global production. Ford just this week announced the opening of a design center in Shanghai.  The China boom in electric vehicles and green

energy help increase the number of billionaires in the country on the 2021 Forbes China Rich List published in November (see post here).

Though not so well known outside of China, Great Wall as of Friday had a market cap of HK$409 billion, or $52 billion, about two two-thirds that of GM, which is worth $77 billion. Great Wall Chairman Wei Jianjun, also known as Jack Wei, has a fortune worth $22 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List.

Wei took over the debt-plagued Great Wall Automobile Industry Company — the predecessor to the current business — in 1990 when he was only 26. He worked at a carpet factory and a water-pump factory before joining Great Wall.

In a separate announcement on Sunday, Great Wall announced that company vice chairman and president Wang Fengying would be leave its board of directors.

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