Volkswagen AG's Skoda Auto division forecasts its sales in Germany, the brand's largest market, will fall 37 percent this year after government incentives expired.
Skoda's German deliveries may drop to the figure of two years ago, when sales totaled 121,000 vehicles, Hermann Schmitt, head of the unit's operations in the country, said today in an interview. That compares with a record 191,000 cars last year.
"Realistically speaking, we'll return to the level of 2008," Schmitt said, predicting a 'difficult year" in 2010. Incentives encouraging new car purchases on trade-ins of older models for scrapping helped spur a 57 percent gain in the Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic-based brand's German sales.
Germany's 2,500-euro ($3,500) "cash-for-clunkers" payments, which ran out in September, helped Skoda become the strongest imported brand in the country last year, raising its market share to 5 percent from 3.9 percent in 2008. Industrywide sales may tumble to as few as 2.75 million cars this year from more than 3.8 million in 2009, the Frankfurt-based VDA auto- manufacturers group said on Dec. 2.
Gross domestic product in Germany probably stagnated in the three months through December after growing in the previous two quarters, the Federal Statistics Office said Jan. 13. Domestic demand may wane as some of Chancellor Angela Merkel's 85 billion euros of stimulus measures come to an end.
Skoda, whose cheapest model in Germany is the Fabia small car priced at 10,320 euros, increased global sales 1.4 percent last year to 684,000 vehicles, the highest in the company's 114- year history, with Chinese deliveries doubling to 123,000 units, the company said Jan. 15. Skoda will provide outlook details at the March 22 annual press conference in Prague.
