Dongfeng Motor Group posts 11.07% YoY drop in August sales

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Dongfeng Motor Group Company Limited (Dongfeng Motor Group) reported a year-on-year drop of 11.07% in August sales with 227,084 vehicles delivered. For the first eight months, the group's year-to-date sales edged down 1.65% from a year ago to 1,923,186 units.

As a major profit source for the group, the PV sector saw a slight year-on-year decrease of 1.92% with the sales reaching 1,632,009 units from January to August. As to the performance of each segment, both SUV and MPV segments encountered year-on-year downturn in August sales and Jan-Aug sales. The car segment outperformed that of the SUV and MPV in terms of August sales with 101,423 units handed over, a year-on-year growth of 3.93%. Meanwhile, the year-to-date car sales, totaling 796,059 units, presented a positive growth of 3.91% over a year earlier.

The Jan-Aug sales decline for the PV sector majorly resulted from the 33.41% year-on-year slump for Dongfeng Liuzhou's PV unit. Dongfeng Passenger Vehicle Company, another main PV unit for the group, also saw its cumulative sales evidently shrank 19.72% to 63,387 units through August. 

Dongfeng Nissan boasted positive year-on-year growth in both August sales and Jan-Aug sales. However, the other three JVs, namely, Dongfeng Honda, Dongfeng Renault and Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile (DPCA) were not that lucky.

The Sino-French JV DPCA witnessed its sales dwindle 4.12% over the previous year to 187,101 units during the first eight months, which was far behind the 410,000-unit sales goal. DPCA has been involved in continuous sales decline in recent years. Its sales in 2014 and 2015 hovered around 700 thousand units on an annual basis, while sharply plunged to around 433 thousand units in 2017.

In addition, Dongfeng Honda came across year-on-year drop in Jan-Aug sales as well affected by such troubles as the sales suspension of the CR-V, customers’ complaints and the recall of several hotter selling models like the Civic, the CR-V and UR-V. The current sales performance leaves a question for the JV to complete the 1 million-unit sales target by 2020.