Since April, the situation of epidemic prevention and control in China has remained grim. The multi-point spread of the epidemic has brought uncertainty to residents’ income. At the same time, the closure and control in some areas has also brought inconvenience to residents’ travel and consumption, directly affecting the production and sales of cars in April. In April, the production and sales of the automobile market decreased significantly year-on-year, with the production and sales of 1205000 and 1181000 vehicles respectively, with a year-on-year decrease of 46.09% and 47.60%; The sharp year-on-year decline in sales volume in April directly dragged down the cumulative sales volume from January to April to – 12.1% year-on-year. Compared with the suspension of automobile industry chains in Jilin and Shanghai in March and April, we believe that the current resumption of work and production will restore the automobile production and sales in May. However, the longer industrial chain of the automobile industry increases the difficulty of resumption of work and production, and the resumption rhythm of suppliers at all levels is inconsistent, which may affect the subsequent recovery of production capacity of the whole vehicle factory. Therefore, this paper predicts that although the resumption of work and production will help alleviate the pressure on the automobile supply chain, it is still unable to get out of the haze in the short term, and there is still some pressure on the production and sales of the automobile industry in May.
In terms of inventory, the enterprise inventory in April was 868000, an increase of 23000 over the previous month; In April, the dealer inventory coefficient was 1.91, up 21.66% year-on-year and 9.14% month on month.
In terms of cost, since April, the prices of natural rubber, aluminum, nickel, palladium, crude oil and lithium carbonate, the key raw material of new energy power batteries, have fallen, but on the whole, they are still at a record high. It should be noted that the production expansion cycle of raw materials is long. We believe that the high cost of automobile enterprises is difficult to fall in the short term, and the pressure on the cost side is still large.
In terms of industrial policies, on April 25, the general office of the State Council issued the opinions on further releasing consumption potential and promoting the sustainable recovery of consumption. The opinions put forward that we should steadily increase the bulk consumption such as automobiles, and all regions should not add automobile purchase restriction measures. The regions that have implemented the purchase restriction should gradually increase the number of automobile increment indicators, relax the qualification restrictions of car buyers, gradually cancel the purchase restriction of automobiles according to local conditions, and promote the transformation of automobile and other consumer goods from purchase management to use management. Since May, Guangdong, Shenzhen, Shenyang, Jiangxi and other places have successively issued automobile consumption promotion policies.
As for the existing bonds of the industry, as of May 6, 2022, there were 90 existing credit bonds (general corporate bonds, private placement bonds, corporate bonds, medium-term notes, short-term financing bonds and directional instruments) in the automobile manufacturing industry and auto parts manufacturing industry, with a total balance of 122650 billion yuan and 21 bond issuers. The main issuers of bonds in the industry are concentrated, and the balance of the top five stock bonds accounts for 66% of the balance of stock bonds as of the date. The main body of issuing bonds is state-owned enterprises, and the types of stock bonds are general corporate bonds and general medium-term notes. In April, the industry issued eight new bonds, with a net financing amount of -4.083 billion yuan.
