China SUV Leader Great Wall’s Shares Drop Nearly 5% After Latest Sales Decline

Hong Kong-traded shares in Great Wall Motor, China’s top homegrown SUV maker, plunged by 4.8% to HK$14.22 at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today after the company reported its latest sales decline.

Sales fell by 7.9% from a year earlier in May as Covid-related lockdowns in key mainland cities shook up the world’s biggest automobile market and global supply chains.

Great Wall’s overall vehicle sales totaled 80,062 units compared with 86,965 a year earlier, the company said in a filing on Wednesday. A 22% plunge in shipments of its flagship Havel SUV models led the fall. For the first five months of 2022, Great Wall’s sales declined by more than 19% from a year earlier to 417,339 units. (See details here.)

Shanghai, the Chinese city hardest hit by the country’s “zero-Covid” policies, eased two months of severe lockdowns on June 1; travel and other restrictions in the area remain.

Great Wall’s Hong Kong-traded shares have lost more than 60% of their value since Nov. 22. Chairman Wei Jianjun is still worth $17.3 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list today.

The company’s stock has rebounded from a recent low of HK$9.11 on May 10 on hopes for improved economic growth in China in the second half of the year.

EV makers BYD, NIO, XPeng and Li Auto and all reported sales increases in May from a year earlier.

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