Maruti Suzuki sees over 80% jump in Dhanteras sales: Can this help tide over H1 slowdown? – Car News

Maruti Suzuki India says affordability is one of the big concerns with regards to demand slowing down in the small car segment. However, the car major clocked 400,000 booking during festive season.

Dhanteras has been encouraging for the country’s largest car maker by market share. Maruti Suzuki India has sold a little less than 20,000 cars this Dhanteras and says that this festive season has been a definitive improvement over the last one with over 400,000 booking during festive season spanning between October 3 till the end of the month.

According to Partho Banerjee, Sr ED M&S, Maruti Suzuki India, “This year Dhanteras starts on October 29 and extends till 2 pm on Oct0ber 30. Today we did around 32,000 deliveries and on Oct 30 we expect to deliver approx 10,000 units more, so approx 42,000 units on Dhanteras. Last year’s tally was 23,000 cars.”

Speaking to the media after the announcement of Q2 numbers, Maruti Suzuki India Chairman RC Bhargava said that “Retail sales have increased 14% YoY, i.e. if we compare the festive season from October 3 to end of month to the same period last year there has been an improvement.”

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Weak Q2 performance, sales decline in H1

Interestingly the Maruti stock slumped a whopping 6% intra-day on October 29 after the company reported 17% drop in net profit. Its Q2FY25 net profit came in at Rs 3,069.2 crore, down 17% YoY from Rs 3,716.5 crore in Q2FY24. Slower domestic sales as a result of decline in demand and flat revenue growth were the key reasons. The Q2 revenue came in at Rs 37,202.8 crore from Rs 37,062.1 crore in Q2FY24.

Sales in Q2 declined to 463,834 units and Bhargava pointed out that slower demand for cars “under Rs 10 lakh is not growing but declining. That is going to be a bit of a worry. Around 2018-2019, small cars comprised 80% of the total markets and a slowdown there is a cause of worry. Affordability is the key reason for people not buying in that category. We need people to have more disposable income.”

CNG the bright spot for Maruti Suzuki

One space that was a bright spot for Maruto Suzuki despite the slowdown was the CNG market share. The company grew market share by 28.36% YoY in H1 at 2.13 lakh units Vs 2.18 cars in the same period last fiscal. Banerjee added that “We are aiming to sell 50,000 S-CNG cars per month with the launch of the Swift S-CNG. One out of every three vehicles is S-CNG vehicle sold from Maruti’s stable this year. We are making strategic marketing tie-ups with 34 distributors to understand which new markets they are planning to expand the gas stations. Based on this information, we are promoting CNG vehicles in those new markets as well.”

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