Shanghai (ZXZC)- SAIC Motor saw its Q1 sales apparently slide 15.88% from the previous year to 1,533,005 vehicles, among which the March sales shrank 14% to 558,558 units, the automaker announced on April 10. This was the seventh month in a row for the company facing year-on-year downturn.

For the first three months of the year, SAIC-IVECO Hongyan Commercial Vehicle and SAIC Motor-CP accomplished year-on-year sales increase, while the other subsidiaries all suffered negative growth. SAIC GM Wuling Indonesia Co.,Ltd is not available for comparison since it was just included the sales report in January, 2019.

SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC-GM posted year-on-year drop of 8.8%, 25.41% and 13.1% respectively in year-to-date (YTD) sales despite their substantial market shares. According to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM were still the champion and the second runner-up by March PV wholesale volume (PV hereby only refers sedan, SUV and MPV) from the previous month.

Earlier this month, SAIC Motor announced that its full-year revenue in 2018 grew 3.62% year on year to RMB902.19 billion and the net profit attributable to shareholders of the company climbed 4.65% to over 36 billion.

SAIC Motor said it will strive to achieve a year on year growth of 0.6% with its 2019 sales growing to 7.1 million units. Besides, the automaker forecasted a full-year revenue of around RMB906.5 billion and a yearly operating cost of RMB777.5 billion.