Sinotruk Jan sales still low at 2,314 heavy trucks

Shanghai, February 13 (Gasgoo.com) China's largest heavy truck maker Sinotruk announced today that the company produced 2,837 heavy-duty trucks and sold 2,314 units in January 2009, Shanghai Securities News reported. Both the output and sales had not recovered from the sharp drop in the fourth quarter of last year.

Sinotruk has also revealed that its parent China National Heavy Duty Truck Group Co., Ltd. (Sinotruk Group) has reported the group's January output of 4,278 units and sales of 4,067 units to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). Sinotruk said that the figures reported by the controlling group have included the output and sales figures of the company.

In today's announcement, the company has not provided its year-on-year or month-on-month growth rates.

Last year, Sinotruk produced 75,664 heavy trucks, down 2.72% year on year and sold 79,218 units, up 8.73% y/y. Sinotruk Group produced 106,400 heavy trucks, up 6.16% y/y and sold 112,000 units, up 11.33% y/y, in the whole year of 2008.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, Sinotruk produced 8,140 heavy trucks, down by 54.55% from the third quarter's output of 17,910 units, and sold 9,799 units, down by 42.02% from the third quarter's sales of 16,902 units.

Market demands for heavy-duty trucks began to slow down in late 2008 amid the financial crisis, but with the Chinese government’s macro-economic control policy and auto sector incentives put into place, the heavy truck industry will benefit and is expected to recover in the second quarter of 2009, industry insiders said.