The Hindu Business Line : Car, two-wheeler sales fall sharply in Nov

As sales figures began trickling in on Monday, the 14 stocks on the BSE crashed. The auto index fell by 108 points and ended up as the second worst performer of the day after realty stocks.

What was particularly alarming was the sharp fall in numbers by market leader Maruti Suzuki. The company posted a 27 per cent fall in domestic sales to end at a new low of 47,704 units.

Just to get a better idea of the declining curve, sales in September totalled 64,682 units and were down marginally to 59,127 units in October. However, November’s fall was sharp which could indicate that December could be a lot worse.

Maruti has suffered, sources say, thanks to the recent tightening in lending norms. The Maruti scrip closed 9.4 per cent down at Rs 485.5 on Monday.

Tata Motors was also a casualty of the rigid financing trend and sold only 14,327 cars in November. The scrip reacted to finish 2.6 per cent down at Rs 132.75. The previous two months had seen its car sales closer to the 20,000-unit mark and a lot was expected from the Indica Vista. Mahindra & Mahindra also had a rough run in November. Domestic sales of its multi-utility vehicles as well as the Logan sedan totalled 7,823 units, a 12 per cent fall from the same period last year. Over the last three months, M&M’s chart has been dipping from 10,628 units in September to 9,394 units in October.

Logan sales in November have been particularly disturbing at barely 300 units, which is a steep fall from 1,500 cars in November last year. “The market sentiment is not good and the incidents over the last 3-4 days have also affected the car industry. This will continue in December too,” Mr Nalin Mehta, CEO, Mahindra Renault, told Business Line.

Things were no better in the two-wheeler arena either except for the fact that market leader Hero Honda held its own with sales of 2.89 lakh units in November though this was still 55,000 units lower than the previous month.

Bajaj Auto did not have a happy month either with sales of two- and three-wheelers totalling 1.59 lakh units in November, a fall of over 35 per cent from the same period last year. The fact that exports accounted for 67,397 units meant that domestic sales for the company were less than 100,000 units.

TVS Motors’s sales slipped to below one lakh in November. In the previous two months, it had managed to keep its sales figure at six digits.

Tatas’ rough ride

Tata Motors’ commercial vehicle sales were down 40 per cent in November at 16,229 units compared with 26,985 vehicles in the same period last year. The month was characterised by huge production cuts and plant shutdown.

The company took the worst beating in medium and heavy commercial vehicles where sales crashed 60 per cent to 5792 units while light commercial vehicles (LCV) sales fell 16 per cent to 10,437 units.