Geely warns of ‘significant threat’ to earnings from pandemic, chip shortage

More than 90 percent of Geely’s vehicles are sold in China and the company has been pushing to increase exports in recent years, focusing mainly on Southeast Asia and Europe.

Geely maintained its full-year sales forecast, which represents growth of 16 percent from 2020, but said the “recent worsening of the chip shortage and the resurgence of COVID-19 cases globally could pose a significant threat to our sales performance over the next few months, thus undermining our chance to achieve the target.”

Geely said the launch of more new and competitive vehicles “should enable the group to perform better in the second half.”

The company said total annual vehicle sales under Geely, Lynk & Co, which is a joint venture with Volvo Cars, and electric vehicle brands Zeekr and Geometry would hit 3.65 million units by 2025. More than 30 percent of them would be electrified vehicles.

Geely has created Zeekr, a new EV brand, with its parent group, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which is China’s largest private carmaker and is controlled by Li Shufu, a billionaire who owns a large stake in Daimler and who has amassed interests in European legacy brands such as Lotus and lower-end players like Malaysia’s Proton.

Geely has said it would seek external funding for the Zeekr brand and would introduce more electric models in its overall lineup.

The company, which abandoned a merger plan with Volvo earlier this year, said the two automakers would combine their powertrain operations and also jointly develop next-generation EV architecture and autonomous driving solutions.

Bloomberg contributed to this report