Shanghai (ZXZC)- China’s biggest auto group SAIC Motor saw its net profit attributable to shareholders of the list company in the first quarter slide 15% year on year to RMB8.251 billion, according to its Q1 report released on April 29.

Meanwhile, the automaker generated a total of revenue of RMB200.192 billion from January to March, down by 16.18% over the previous year.

The drop of quarterly revenue and net profit were relevant to its Q1 sales drop to a great extent. 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 seventh month in a row for the company facing year-on-year downturn.

SAIC-IVECO Hongyan Commercial Vehicle and SAIC Motor-CP accomplished year-on-year sales increase, while the other subsidiaries all suffered negative growth.

SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC-GM posted year-on-year drop of 8.8%, 25.41% and 13.1% respectively in Jan.-Mar. sales despite their substantial market shares.

In early April, the Shanghai-based auto giant released the 2018 annual report saying its full-year revenue 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 despite the rare sales downturn for China’s auto market.