China SUV Leader Great Wall Motor Reports 41% Plunge In April Sales Amid Lockdowns

April sales at Great Wall Motor, China’s top homegrown SUV maker, plunged by 41% from a year earlier in April as Covid-related lockdowns in key mainland cities shook up the world’s biggest automobile market.

Great Wall’s overall vehicle sales only reached 53,777 units compared with 91,784 a year earlier, the company said in a filing on Monday. A 47% drop in shipments of its flagship Havel models led the decline. (See details here.)

Great Wall’s Hong Kong-traded shares have lost more than 73% of their value since Nov. 22. Chairman Wei Jianjun is still worth $11 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list today. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange was closed on Monday for Buddha’s Birthday.

China’s “zero-Covid” policy response to the spread of the Omicron variant in the country this year will “exact a very high cost on the economy,” Kenneth Jarrett, a Shanghai-based senior advisor to the Albright Stonebridge Group and former U.S. diplomat said in an interview yesterday. “If ‘zero Covid’ remains the policy, lockdowns can happen all over China for the rest of the year. Given the complexity and size of supply chains in China, this could mean additional disruptions in the months ahead, which would ripple through and disrupt global supply chains.” (See full interview here.)

EV makers NIO, XPeng and Li Auto and all reported sales declines in April from March. (See related post here.)

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