Geely '09 auto sales beat target, shares up

Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd (0175.HK), China's top private carmaker, more than doubled auto sales in December to a record and its 2009 sales were 30 percent above target, pushing its shares up nearly 3 percent on Thursday.

Geely, whose parent company is bidding for Ford Motor's Volvo unit, sold 325,413 vehicles last year, up 59 percent from the previous year and exceeding its target of 250,000 units, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Its December vehicles sales rose 108 percent to 43,446 cars and was 23 percent higher than its sales in November, it said.

The company is set to revise up its sales target of 400,000 vehicles for 2010, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported on Thursday.

Shares of Geely hit a session high of HK$4.18 before steadying at HK$4.13, up 1.7 percent at 0238 GMT. They beat a 0.74 percent gain in the broader market.

Following an estimated $1.8 billion bid for Volvo by its parent, Zhejiang Geely Holdings Group, Geely aims to expand its overseas market by exporting two-thirds of its cars by 2015, the paper quoted Geely Automobile's chief executive Gui Shengyue as saying.

Gui would not directly comment on the Volvo bid but said "our principle has always been the same which is the parent company will build up new production bases and will inject them into the listed company once the construction has completed and the bases become profitable."

Gui and other Geely officials were not immediately available to comment.

Geely's exports fell substantially in 2009 due to the global financial crisis. It sold 19,000 cars overseas last year, or 6 percent of the total against about 20 percent in 2008, Gui said.

The home-grown automaker hopes to start exports to western Europe this year in line with China's plan of selling $85 billion worth of vehicles and auto parts to overseas markets by 2015, the paper said.

Geely also has a stake in Manganese Bronze Holdings PLC, which makes London's iconic black cabs.