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September 25, 2025, Chery listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) and completed its IPO, raising 9.145 billion HKD, becoming the largest auto company IPO in HK stocks that year. On the first anniversary of its listing, this auto company that started from a "Little Grass House" in Wuhu announced two consecutive rounds of personnel adjustments. This organizational change also kicked off the second half of its globalization.
September 23, Zhang Guozhong was appointed Executive Vice President of Chery Holding, while Zhang Guibing, who has long helmed the overseas business, succeeded as Executive Vice President of Chery Automobile to oversee daily operations; On October 7, Chery's main brand was merged into the global market system and directly managed by Zhang Guibing. With two personnel changes within two weeks, they all pointed to the same keyword — Globalization 3.0.
Looking at this personnel layout from the milestone of the IPO's first anniversary, it feels more like a strategic answer sheet. The capital market gave Chery ammunition to go global, and organizational restructuring is the new engine it equipped for itself. While many independent brands are still going global with the model of domestic R&D and selling cars overseas, Chery chose to first connect domestic and overseas operational systems. Will this organizational adjustment be able to truly knit domestic and overseas businesses into a unified strategy?
IPO Anniversary Stress Test
Looking back at Chery's first complete annual report after the IPO, the most noteworthy change is the position swap between domestic and overseas business status. In the full year of 2025, Chery achieved total revenue of 300.29 billion yuan, breaking the 300 billion yuan threshold for the first time, with a net profit of 19.51 billion yuan, up 36.1% year-on-year. Among them, overseas revenue was 157.42 billion yuan, up 56% year-on-year, with its proportion of total revenue rising to 52.4%. Exported 1.2944 million vehicles, accounting for 49.2% of total sales volume. Among top independent brands, it is rare for overseas revenue scale to exceed domestic.
Entering 2026, the growth momentum continues, but structural issues are beginning to gradually surface. In the first half of the year, Chery's overseas revenue was 98.97 billion yuan, up 51% year-on-year, with its proportion of total revenue further climbing to 69.1%. Export sales volume was 943,800 vehicles, up 71.5% year-on-year; European market sales were 174,000 vehicles, surging 212% year-on-year. Gross margin also increased from 13.0% to 16.1%, with overseas high-gross-margin businesses driving the improvement of the overall profit structure.
Overseas business marched triumphantly, the domestic market temporarily under pressure, and profits are easily amplified by exchange rate fluctuations. This is the real situation Chery faced at the first anniversary of the IPO. In the past, globalization was more about telling an incremental story; selling one more car meant more income. Now, with overseas revenue proportion approaching 70%, the complexity of globalization is no longer comparable to days gone by. The higher the proportion of overseas revenue, the more concentrated the impact of exchange rate fluctuations, geopolitical environment, and regulatory differences across countries.
Chery has a clear judgment on this: Globalization 1.0 is whole vehicle CKD product output; the 2.0 stage shifted to building factories overseas to achieve capacity going global; today entering the 3.0 system going global stage, manufacturing, supply chain, talent, and service ecosystem extend outward as a whole, with the goal of taking root locally, serving locally, and becoming a part of the local community.
The core obstacle of this upgrade lies in that, previously, domestic and overseas were two relatively independent business systems, product definitions were severed from each other, and domestic models only underwent simple modifications before being exported directly, making it difficult to adapt to regulatory requirements and user needs of different markets. When sufficient capital was obtained after listing and fundraising, conditions to solve this problem gradually matured, and this round of personnel adjustments thus took the stage.
Underlying Logic of Personnel Changes
To understand this personnel adjustment, you need to look at the two rounds of moves together. The first round of adjustments on September 23 focused on the repositioning of the top-level architecture. Zhang Guozhong is a founding veteran of Chery, joining the company in 1997, and successively served as passenger car factory director, procurement company general manager, executive vice general manager of the company, etc. This time, he was transferred from Chery Automobile to Executive Vice President of Chery Holding Group, with his work platform rising from the listed entity to the holding group level.
Chery Holding's business includes commercial vehicles, parts, finance, intelligence, and other segments, with coverage far exceeding the passenger car listed company. The intent of this transfer is clear: let Zhang Guozhong coordinate finance, trade, and various industrial resources at the group level to provide resource support at the group dimension for the listed company's globalization.
The successor Zhang Guibing is the long-term operator of Chery's overseas business. He joined Chery in 1999, initially responsible for overseas quality and regional business, later successively serving as deputy general manager, executive vice general manager, and general manager of the international business department; since December 2024, he has served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the International Business Business Group, coordinating all international business outside the Chinese market. Having a veteran who has deeply cultivated overseas for over 20 years oversee the listed entity's operations sends a very clear signal: global business operation experience is weighed more heavily in Chery's overall operations than ever before.
The second round of adjustments on October 7 was even more critical, directly touching business architecture and brand division of labor. According to the announcement, Zhang Guibing is in charge of the Chery Brand Domestic Business Group and International Business Business Group, and coordinates the Global Design Center, Global HR Center, Global Legal Center, Global Spare Parts Ecosystem Division, as well as Anhui Mojia Zhichuang Robot Technology Co., Ltd., and concurrently serves as Chairman of the Market and Marketing Management Committee, Executive Vice Chairman of the Safety and Environmental Protection Committee, and Chairman of the Process Transformation Management Committee.
This means that Chery's main brand's domestic business and international business have shifted from previously operating relatively independently to unified coordination. The domestic market is no longer planned separately away from the global system, and product development synchronously faces domestic and overseas markets from the source.
At the same time, Executive Vice President Li Xueyong is in charge of the Jetour Brand Business Unit, focusing on Jetour's premiumization, building a global competitive off-road brand, while also taking over the corporate PR department, and concurrently serving as Executive Vice Chairman of the Market and Marketing Management Committee.
Li Xueyong is the core creator of the Jetour brand, who led the brand to precise positioning, starting from zero and growing into a dark horse of the car market. Currently, hardcore off-road and boxy tracks are global hot directions. Making Jetour this unique brand bigger and stronger and grabbing the global off-road mindset is an important move for Chery's differentiated going global.
Globalization 3.0 Enters Deep Water Zone
Zooming out, Chery's globalization has already completed two stages. 1.0 was product export, with whole vehicles and CKD parts output outward; 2.0 was capacity going global, with 16 KD overseas assembly plants covering Brazil, Spain, Thailand, and other places; in 2024, it also revived the Spanish national brand EBRO. The difference in the 3.0 stage lies in depth: building factories locally, building supply chains, hiring local talent, synchronously exporting product standards, industrial ecosystems, and service systems, truly becoming a part of the local.
A few implementation actions already reveal the outline of 3.0. In the South African market, Chery took over the Nissan Roslin Plant, planned to start production in mid-2027, with a single shift annual capacity of 50,000 vehicles, striving to achieve a 40% localization rate in 2028. The project will retain the original factory's 692 employees, driving nearly 3,000 upstream and downstream supply chain jobs.
At the talent level, Chery's overseas employees have broken through 20,000 people, with local employees accounting for 85%. Such investments are difficult to quickly convert into profits in the short term, but they are accumulating long-term risk resistance capability. Because, the higher the localization degree, the smaller the impact of trade barriers and exchange rate fluctuations.
Returning to the organizational level, this round of personnel adjustments is actually the foundation support for the entire Globalization 3.0. Globally unified product definitions and styling can reduce repeated R&D investments, allowing same-platform models to synchronously adapt to laws of multiple countries; globally coordinating the spare parts ecosystem can diluate operating risks of a single market.
In the end, what really tests Chery is no longer just export sales volume, but whether this set of organizational structure can make global collaboration truly run through. Organizational change belongs to slow variables, and Zhang Guibing, holding centralized authority and responsibility, has a heavy burden on his shoulders. Internal system compatibility takes time, which is the price all transformations cannot avoid.
Although transformation has some pain, looking at it from a larger industry coordinate, the value of this organizational adjustment is not limited to Chery itself. The competition among top independent auto companies has upgraded to a contest of global organizational and system capabilities. Whoever builds the organizational structure adapted to globalization first will have the opportunity to take the initiative in the next stage of competition. Chery's exploration can be said to provide a sample for continuous observation of Chinese car going global.
In summary, the IPO's one-year anniversary, capital gave Chery ammunition to go global; two rounds of personnel adjustments are the organizational engine adapted to Globalization 3.0 equipped for Chery. As an auto company that has secured the top spot of Chinese brand passenger car exports for 23 consecutive years, Chery's organizational experiment is also paving the way for Chinese car going global.
