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AUTO PUNDITZ
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November 2018 Car Sales – Snapshot

Tough Times for the Indian Auto Industry!

Source: Livemint


The Industry has seldom seen a dull festive season and the slowdown during Dussehra & Diwali has taken a lot of Indian OEMs by surprise. While the dealers anticipated festive rush and had stocked up pretty well; the negative sentiment led to lower conversions in the consumer end and the pile up of stocks was inevitable. This had a strong and visible impact on the Nov’18 Industry volumes. While we primarily share the Wholesale data (units dispatched from the Manufaturing Plant/OEM to Dealerships); we would want to highlight the FADA study which had published the end Retail Data (sale of car from Dealership to Customer). The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) published the vehicle registrations data of this year’s festive period; i.e. from 10 Oct’18 to 20 Nov’18 and compared with previous year’s festive period (21 Sep’17 – 1 Nov’17). The Passenger Vehicle sales de-grew a clear 14% and is a BIG reason for concern. The FADA report is as shown below –


The effect of the dull festive season was pretty evident in Nov’18 figures and almost all OEMs registered a YoY de-growth! The Passenger Vehicle sales fell by over 3% in Nov’18 when compared to Nov’17. Let’s see how the OEMs fared in Nov’18 –

  1. Maruti Suzuki registered a de-growth of 0.3% and was led by the fall in Nexa volumes. Anything below 1.5L volumes for Maruti+Nexa looks insufficient.

  2. Even with the launch of New Santro; Hyundai couldn’t avoid the fall and de-grew by 1%. While Hyundai posted a sales of >52k units in Oct’18; it struggled to achieve >43k units in Nov’18

  3. Tata again overtakes Mahindra to position itself in the No.3 OEM spot. However the volumes fell by 1% in Nov’18 v/s Nov’17

  4. With 2 launches in past 2 months (Marazzo & Alturas); Mahindra has been fighting hard to enhance its numbers. It has been able to maintain a flat growth with the new launches; but has lost the 3rd Rank. It’ll be interesting to see how things turn out post launch of S201 & Harrier for both the Indian OEMs.

  5. Honda with its low base in Nov’17; was successful to register the highest growth amongst all OEMs (10%).

Let’s see how the Market Shares fluctuated in Nov’18 v/s Nov’17 –

  1. Even with a degrowth in YoY volumes; Maruti has registered a high Market Share of 54.6%. Infact; the Market Share has grown by 1.7% in Nov’18; thanks to its high volumes and higher degrowth in other OEMs.

  2. If observed clearly; the Top 5 OEMs have registered a positive Market Share growth; while rest ALL OEMs have declined! It clearly indicates that over a period of time; it shall be extremely difficult for the lower ranked OEMs to survive. Tough market dynamics shall test even the biggest OEMs and the race to profitability isn’t an easy one!

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