Shanghai (ZXZC)- Great Wall Motors expected a semi-annual operating income of RMB41.38 billion for the year of 2019, the automaker announced on July 19.

Net profit attributable to shareholders of the public company for the first half reached roughly RMB1.53 billion. Excluding the impact of certain no-recurring gains and losses, the net profit still totaled around RMB1.24 billion.

Confronting continuous downturn, China's auto market for the first two quarters was full of changes and challenges due to a number of factors like the Sino-U.S. trade friction, earlier-than-scheduled implementation of China Stage 6 Emission Standard and phase-out of NEV subsidies.

Based on the current macro-economic climate, the growth of the overall automobile industry after six months and its actual sales performance, Great Wall Motors reduced its annual sales target to 1.07 million from 1.2 million units to maintain a sound, stable and sustainable development for the company's whole businesses, the automaker said.

The carmaker said on July 9 it sold a total of 493,538 new vehicles for the first half of 2019, gaining a year-on-year increase of 4.7%.

Amongst the vehicle sold through June, 352,872 units, 46,884 units and 27,013 units were offered by Haval, WEY and ORA brands respectively.

Year-to-date export volume amounted to 30,305 units, jumping 29.4% from the previous year.

In June, Great Wall Motors's vehicle plant in Tula, Russia, the Chinese automaker's first wholly-owned full-process manufacturing plant outside its home market, was formally put into production on June 5, 2019.

At the same time, the Chinese automaker's first model being sold worldwide, the Haval F7, rolled off production lines and is now available in markets outside of China. This signifies that Great Wall Motor has entered a new stage with its global strategy but more importantly sets Chinese auto brands on a new journey to world markets, the automaker said.

What's more, Great Wall Motors has strengthened its offensive in ICV domain by launching the all-new intelligent connectivity strategy “GOT” (GreatWall Totally Online) on July 15.

At the launching ceremony, the automaker also announced its partnership with eight companies, including Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, Huawei and Qualcomm, to jointly build the GTO smart ecosystem and develop 5G&AI-based experience-driven robots that can offer users full-lifecycle mobility services (Photo source: Great Wall Motors's press release).