BEIJING, Feb. 13 (InfoChina) – Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: CBA, HK: 1114)’s board chairman Wu Xiao’an held that Brilliance Auto Group, parent company of Brilliance Auto, expects to see a turnaround from loss into profit in 2007.
Wang Shiping, executive director of Brilliance Auto, noted that the turnaround will be driven by two factors. One is that the supply of Brilliance Auto Group’s key products has fallen short of demand as of last year, which removes the pressure for further price cut and thus will bring more income to the company this year. The other is that the company is expected to cut cost by 1.1 billion yuan this year as a result of production line upgrade and large-scale auto parts procurement.
Spurred by Brilliance Auto’s optimistic performance expectation, the H-share of the company surged by 9.29 percent on Monday to close at 2.00 Hong Kong dollars.
Brilliance Auto reported loss of 416 million yuan in 2005 and 113.6 million yuan in the first half of 2006 and is expected to continue suffering loss for the whole year of 2006.
The group company sold some 210,000 cars in 2006, ranking the 9th by sales volume among auto manufacturers in China. In the first month of 2007, sales of Brilliance Auto Group hit a historical high. An aggregate of 24,000 cars were sold out in the period, a rise of 190.9 percent year on year, including 10,853 units of Jinbei passenger car, up 94 percent year on year, over 10,000 units of Zhonghua car, a surge of 1,028 percent and 2,900 units of BMW-Brilliance car, up 71 percent year on year. (Edited by Sun Huanjie,
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China Stock News 
