Great Wall Motor Expected to Float A Shares soon

(chinatrucks.com, Mar.08, 2010)Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. (SEHK: 2333), one of China's indigenous automakers, has girded itself up for the Chinese yuan-denominated A-share listing in due course, for the sake of production capacity expansion, said its president, Wang Fengying.

As a self-developed pickup and SUV manufacturer, Great Wall Motor has been listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK). In July 2008, it once intended to issue 122 million A-shares, raising capital for its automatic transmission and new-type high-efficiency diesel engine R&D, but this plan was not approved by the CSRC.

Last year, domestic stock market and automobile market both boomed, which charmed the Hong Kong-listed carmaker again. It expects to take advantage of a batch of best-performing projects, including two new bases, to gain more financing.

The first phase of its new base settled in Tianjin Municipality, north China, will be completed in October 2010, with an annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles. As for the 300,000-unit Phase II, the completion is scheduled for 2012.

In addition, Great Wall Motor is set to put another new base into operation in 2013. Located in its headquarters, the northern Chinese city of Baoding, Hebei Province, the project is designed to turn out 500,000 cars per year, said people with the direct knowledge of the matter.

The company aggregately sold 225,000 sedans, SUVs, and pickups in 2009, with a 77% surge year on year. In order to hit its 2010 sales goal of 400,000 units, Great Wall Motor will further optimize its product structure and outline a new-type brand promotion strategy.

In particular, the production capacity and sales volume of Great Wall Motor are targeted for 2 million and 1.8 million vehicles by 2015, respectively.

This year, five Great Wall Motor SUV models are scheduled to hit the market. And the automaker will launch a kind of medium- and high-end urban SUV, the Hover H6, in 2011 and five new high-end SUV models under the SC-series before 2013.

Meanwhile, its great efforts to extend reaches to the A-class auto market will be continued in 2010, when three new sedan models are set to hit the market in succession. As for its pickup operation, the most important thing is variety integration. From now on, all of its pickup products will be named the Wingle.

The Baoding-headquartered carmaker did not abandon the overseas cooperation in recent years. In the second half of 2009, it entered into the cooperation agreement upon establishment of a joint-venture assembly plant with an industrial company in Bulgaria.

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