“Last October’s performance only reflects that the performance of the automotive industry is beginning to normalize. Our growth outlook remains to be upbeat for the remainder of the year.”
That was how Ma. Fe Perez-Agudo, HARI President and CEO, summed up the industry’s overall results in terms of vehicles sales, citing her own company’s performance last month.
The official distributor of Hyundai vehicles in the country posted October sales of 3,578 units.
A strong start to the fourth quarter of the year, October saw the brand grow 9.6% compared to October 2017. This puts the total January to October 2018 sales at 29,018 units, closing the gap with a minute decline of 5.5% to the 30,717 units sold in same period of the previous year. The sales performance of the brand remains consistent with the overall demand for automotive vehicles in the country.
Monthly trend would show that unit sales would eventually pick up in the last two months of the year.
Sales of the Passenger Car Segment remained to be the brand’s volume driver owing more than half of the brand’s total unit sales for the year. For October alone PC sales amounted to 2,113 units or a 28.8% decline, totaling to 21,065 units from January to October.
The Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) segment took the spotlight as it grew from 1,153 units in October 2017 to 2,074 units this year, recording a 79.9% year-on-year growth. This amounts to a total of 12,155 units sold from January – October 2018, growing 25.9% compared to the same period of the previous year. The segment contributed to almost half of all the year-to-date Hyundai vehicle sales in 2018 with the successful introduction of the Kona, Hyundai’s entry to the subcompact SUV segment. The increased industrial activity has also given rise to the H100, Hyundai’s Small Utility Truck, which experienced a sudden surge in its 2018 sales growing 45.8%.
Sales and Economic Outlook
The Philippines remains to be one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, next to Vietnam and China. Although it did experience a slowdown in the 3rd Quarter of 2018 with the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) easing to 6.1%.
The slower than usual pace was weighed down by weakened household spending due to the consistently high inflation and the lowered agriculture output from the series of typhoons that hit the country. However, with October inflation easing to 6.7%, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) projected that inflation has peaked and would begin to taper off till the end of the year.
Hyundai is optimistic as economic headwinds are expected to slow down, Perez-Agudo said.
The brand is in a strong position to take advantage of the remainder of the year as sales are expected to increase in the last two months of 2018.
