SAIC's own brand car sales to surge 78% this year

SAIC Motor Corp., China's largest car maker by sales volume, said own brand vehicle sales will exceed 160,000 units this year, up 78 percent from a year earlier, caijing.com reported Monday, citing a source who asked not to be named.

That sales of the company's own brand vehicles for 2010 will almost double last year's 90,000 units is benefiting from major increases in production and sales scale and the brands' overall profitability, the same person said. Whether SAIC's self-developed brands have swung back into profit will be noticed at length in the company's annual report, the person added.

SAIC currently has two independent brands: Roewe and MG (Morris Garages), which are positioned as middle-to-high end brands and are very cost effective.

As a new entrant to the automotive market, this is already a good result, CITIC Securities analyst Dr. Xu Ying told reporters on the phone, saying "SAIC's self-branded models cover A0, A and B segments and an own-brand hybrid model will roll off the assembly line at the end of this year with a price tag between 80,000 yuan and 260,000 yuan ($12,000-$39,100)."

In addition, Dr. Xu said FAW Car Co., Ltd. will sell about 240,000- 250,000 Besturn and Mazda vehicles this year. While sales of China's homegrown automakers including Dongfeng Motor, Chongqing Changan Auto, BAIC Group, BYD, etc., totaling more than 20, will account for 30 percent of the country's total auto sales.

The above 20 automakers sold 1.84 million vehicles in the first half this year, up 63.8 percent year-on-year. That is a lot higher than the industry's average growth rate of 50.7 percent. Meanwhile, the market share of China's own brand passenger vehicles reached 34 percent, rising 3 percent from the 31 percent during the same period last year.

SAIC spelled out its own brand plans in 2006, and had invested 2.9 billion yuan in building a production base in Lin Gang, near Shanghai, to manufacture self-branded models, in 2008. It now has three production bases for own brand vehicles that it aims to produce 300,000 units of this year.