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Zen races past Matiz, catches up with Santro in March

Maruti's flagship model Zen outpaced competition to retain its position as the single largest selling model in its category, while Daewoo Matiz revved up and caught up with fellow country cousin Hyundai Santro in March 2000.

Maruti sold over 7,500 units of Zen during the month, while Hyundai followed achieving sales of around 6,200 units of Santro.

Daewoo, riding on the increasing demand for its small wonder, caught neck-and-neck with Hyundai and ended the month with sales of 6,064 units of Matiz.

Incidentally, Maruti's combined sales of Zen and Wagon-R in March is double the nearest competitor. The company sold over 4,800 units of Wagon-R in the month, achieving a combined sales figure of over 12,300 units, company sources said.

Daewoo Motors India Limited or DMIL has recorded a four fold surge in vehicle sales during the 1999-2000 fiscal to 40,217 units as against 10,121 units a year ago. The company sold 37,059 units of Matiz during the year, which included 1,196 units that were exported to European and neighbouring countries.

The company sold 6,215 passenger car units in March, including 6,064 units of Matiz. This also includes 211 units of Matiz, which were exported during the month.

March 2000 sales represent a 436 per cent jump over the same month last year and a 40 per cent increase over February 2000.

Daewoo attributed this surge in sales to increasing demand for Matiz. Keeping this in view, DMIL has started two-shift operation and is all set to increase its monthly production level. The company has surpassed its projected sale for March.

Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor India Limited, or HMIL, has surpassed its sales target for the 1999-2000 fiscal by more than 25 per cent having sold over 75,000 units of Santro and Accent as against the targeted 60,000.

In March, Hyundai operated at 103 per cent capacity utilisation and achieved total sales of over 8,000 units with accent accounting for slightly over 2,000 units, the highest ever since starting production, company sources said.

Santro sales also remained consistent at over 6,000 units. The company had sold 6,203 units of Santro in February and 7,402 units in January 2000. Accent sales stood at 1,270 units in February and 1,243 units in January.

Hyundai had sold a total of 7,473 passenger car units in February and 8,645 units in January.

Operating at 100 per cent capacity utilisation for the past three months, Hyundai is now planning to move into third shift starting July.

"We have already fully stretched our capacity and are now at 100 per cent capacity utilisation. We have actually sold whatever we produced during the month. If we could produce more, we would have sold that as well. We would be proceeding at around 7,000 per month production level till July and then expand it further.''

The current waiting period on both Santro and Accent are around two weeks.

The company to increase thrust on marketing the mid-size offering Accent has attributed the drop in Santro sales to the conscious decision. "With the demand for accent picking up, we did not want our customers to wait for the car and so pulled down Santro production to adjust Accent.''

In the first eleven months of the current fiscal, the company has achieved sales of 67,236 units, including 63,034 units of Santro and 4,202 units of Accent.

The company currently has an installed capacity of 82,000 units per annum on a two-shift basis, which can be hiked to 123,000 units per annum by adding another shift.

HMIL had recently announced plans to privately place up to 24 per cent stake in the company in the year 2000. Though an exact time frame for the divestment has not been finalised as yet, the company had stated that it was planning to sell the equity to several institutional investors, including foreign buyers.

The money raised through the private placement would be utilised for funding expansion programme. HMIL equity base is currently Rs 8 billion.

The decision to sell off stake in Hyundai Motor India stems out of the fact that the company has recorded profit in its first full year of operations. HMIL ended the 1999 calendar year with a net profit of slightly over Rs 200 million.

UNI

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