Profit soars by 506%! Why did SAIC Motor's stock price drop again?

| Car Observer Jun

I can’t understand it. I really can’t understand it.

On April 2, 2026, SAIC Group released its “explosive” annual report. In 2025, net profit attributable to the parent was 10.1 billion yuan, up 506%. Non-recurring net profit excluding items went from a loss of 5.4 billion yuan to a profit of 7.4 billion yuan. Vehicle sales totaled more than 4.5 million units, up 12%. New energy sales reached 1.64 million units, up 33%.

Just looking at these numbers, you might think this long-established automaker has finally turned things around.

But when you look at the stock price, there’s no sign of turbulence. Even on April 2 it fell 3.44%! And over the full year of 2025, it fell by roughly more than 20%—and around Car Observer Jun, most investors’ attitude toward it is mostly “not much interest.”

Chart source | Eastmoney (thanks for this!)

Why is that? Is it a market mismatch, or is there something in the financial report that needs to be pulled apart? Today, we’re going to talk about it.

First, let’s talk about profit growth—we’ll jump straight to the profit and loss statement.

In 2025, SAIC Group’s total profit was 24.91 billion yuan, up 136.98% year over year; net profit was 17.44 billion yuan, up 199.1% year over year; net profit attributable to the parent was 10.1 billion yuan, up 506% year over year.

With this kind of growth rate, among more than 5,000 companies on the A-share market, it’s also top-tier.

Car Observer Jun summed it up: GAC Group’s profit growth has three major contributors.

The first major contributor is investment income.

In 2025, SAIC’s investment income reached 13.4 billion yuan, which is 6.2 billion yuan more than the previous year. Among them, investment income from associates and joint ventures went from a loss of 1.3 billion yuan last year to a profit of 5.7 billion yuan directly.

So back-and-forth like this creates a difference of more than 7 billion yuan.

The second major contributor is gains from changes in fair value. In plain terms: it’s money “earned on paper” from assets you hold—such as stocks, funds, bonds, etc.—when the market price rises but you haven’t sold yet.

In 2025, this portion of GAC Group’s income exceeded 6.6 billion yuan, about 3.8 billion yuan more than 2024’s less than 2.4 billion yuan.

The third major contributor is credit impairment losses. In other words, other people owe the company money, and they probably won’t be able to repay it fully—or at all. The company recognizes that expected loss in the accounts in advance.

In 2025, SAIC Group’s expense for this item was less than 1.1 billion yuan, shrinking by about 2.9 billion yuan compared with nearly 4.0 billion yuan in 2024.

If you do a simple calculation, these three major contributors account for a profit difference of about 13.7 billion yuan that SAIC Group “contributed” for 2025. In 2025, its net profit was 17.44 billion yuan, which is 116.1 billion yuan higher than 58.3 billion yuan in 2024.

Seen this way, the share of profit actually contributed by SAIC Group’s “core page” in 2025 is not that high.

On the other hand, Car Observer Jun sees that SAIC Group’s main business itself has been struggling.

For a long time, SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM have been unquestionable “profit milk cows” for SAIC Group. But in 2025, the amount of “milk” produced by these two cows is already far less than before.

SAIC Volkswagen sold 1.024 million vehicles, down 10.81% year over year. SAIC-GM sold 0.535 million vehicles—though slightly up, compared with its peak when it was at the million-unit scale, it’s completely different. More importantly, the profit contribution from these two joint ventures can no longer return to the level of those earlier years.

SAIC Group has tried to inject new vitality into its joint-venture business by partnering with Huawei to launch the “AITO” brand. But the advertising placement for the AITO H5 was in the late September of 2025, and its contribution to full-year profits is extremely limited. Moreover, whether this “joint venture + new forces” cooperation model can truly become a stable source of profit still needs time to be proven.

In 2025, SAIC’s new energy vehicle sales were 1.643 million units, up 33.1%—the results are fairly good—but currently this segment is still loss-making.

IM Motors, the high-end new energy brand SAIC has poured its efforts into, recorded a loss of 3.598 billion yuan in 2025. SAIC Maxus posted a loss of 1.611 billion yuan.

If we summarize all the issues above together, we can understand why the capital market responded coolly to this “eye-catching” financial report.

So it seems SAIC’s transformation is still a long way off. The capital market is also still waiting for a real answer that can bring about a true “qualitative change.”

For charts in this article whose source is not indicated, they are all drawn from various channels’ public disclosures; this is hereby stated and we extend our thanks! The views in this article are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice.

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