Recently, the JD Auction platform shows that the assets in the bankruptcy liquidation case of GAC Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “GAC FCA”) are being auctioned. Among them, the Changsha factory of GAC FCA is being auctioned, and the starting price is 1.9152885 billion yuan. It is understood that this is the first time that this factory has been auctioned, but due to no one bidding, it finally ended in a failure.
GAC FCA applied for bankruptcy in October 2022, and at that time this incident once became one of the landmark events in the automotive industry in 2022. At that time, the court believed that the actual assets of GAC FCA could no longer pay off all debts, and it has basically stopped operating now, and it is obviously lacking in solvency, which conforms to the reasons for bankruptcy stipulated in the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law. In November 2022, GAC FCA officially entered the bankruptcy process.
The data shows that the Fiat Group and GAC Group jointly established GAC Fiat Automobile Co., Ltd. in March 2010. In January 2014, Fiat merged with Chrysler to form the “Fiat Chrysler Group”, becoming the world’s seventh largest automaker. In January 2015, GAC Fiat Automobile Co., Ltd. was officially renamed GAC Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Co., Ltd.
Looking back at the development process of GAC FCA, as a Sino-foreign joint venture automaker, GAC FCA’s layout time in the domestic market is not too late. Unfortunately, its influence in the Chinese market is not high, and it fell after a short period of glory. Here is a glorious moment first, that is, when GAC FCA just started. At that time, the performance of GAC FCA in the auto market was fairly good, and the product update speed was extremely fast. In less than 3 years, it laid out 4 SUV models, and thus obtained a good sales performance. The data shows that the sales of GAC FCA in 2016 and 2017 were 179,900 and 222,300 respectively. Among them, in 2017, it even became the joint venture SUV brand with the fastest cumulative sales volume exceeding 400,000, setting a sales peak.
Regrettably, after this, GAC FCA suddenly stopped abruptly. By 2022, GAC FCA has been in a suspended state, and the monthly production and sales are directly “0” or “-“. According to the data of the new car traffic insurance, the cumulative sales volume of GAC FCA in 2022 is only 6,030 units, a year-on-year decline of 78.36%. Compared with the sales volume of 222,300 in 2017, the performance in 2022 is a big disappointment. However, even more bleakly, due to the poor sales performance and other impacts, as of September 30, 2022, the total assets of GAC FCA (unaudited) are 7.322 billion yuan, and the total liabilities are 8.113 billion yuan, and the asset-liability ratio reaches 110.80%, and this has also become the last straw that crushes GAC FCA, and the serious insolvency has caused GAC FCA to be difficult to return, and finally was forced to apply for bankruptcy in October 2022.
The data shows that GAC FCA has two major production bases, the Changsha factory and the Guangzhou factory. In September 2021, due to idle production capacity, the Stellantis Group announced the shutdown of the Guangzhou factory of GAC FCA, and then the factory was taken over by GAC Aion and used for the production of pure electric models. As for the Changsha factory of GAC FCA, the factory is located at No. 18 Yingxia Road, Changsha County, Changsha City, Hunan Province, and the land use right area is 700,112.8 square meters. There are 19 buildings with real estate certificates. This auction includes various machinery and equipment produced by GAC FCA in addition to land and building factories.
It is understood that after the failure of the first auction, the second auction will be opened later, and the second auction time starts at 10:00 on August 5. It is worth noting that the JD Auction information shows that the starting price of the second auction has been reduced from 1.9152885 billion yuan to 1.5322308 billion yuan, a decrease of 383.0577 million yuan. As for whether the auction can be successful after the price reduction, there will be an answer in a few days.
