Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), the nation's third-largest automobile vendor, told investors yesterday that they expected sales to be slower in the second quarter than the first, citing seasonal business cycles.
The company announced yesterday that its first-quarter pre-tax earnings grew 1.39 percent from a year ago to NT$1.25 billion, or NT$4.2 per share, on sales of NT$16.87 billion, up 6.91 percent year-on-year.
"But the strong sales growth seen in the first quarter spurred by the rollout of new models is expected to become flat in the beginning of the second quarter," Yulon Nissan's spokesman Wu Hsin-fa (吳新發) told investors yesterday.
The growth momentum may not rebound until June or July, Wu said, predicting the number of new-car registrations may reach 110,000 to 120,000 vehicles in the April-June quarter, down from more than 145,000 units in the previous quarter.
The automobile industry uses new car registrations to gauge the sales of new vehicles. The number of these registrations was 474,318 units last year, up 16.66 percent from 406,580 units in 2003.
As for Yulon Nissan, Wu said the company's sales could slide to around 17,000 cars in the second quarter from 21,254 units in the first. The company expects to sell 70,000 vehicles this year, accounting for a 15 percent share of the nation's total. Wu said the company expects the overall figure will rise slightly to around 480,000 units this year.
Yulon Nissan is a joint venture in which Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) holds a 60 percent stake and Nissan Motor Co of Japan holds the rest.
After being spun off from its parent company Yulon Motor amid restructuring in 2003, Yulon Nissan took over an investment in China, a three-way joint venture named Aeolus Automobile Co (風神), in which the Taiwanese company has a 40 percent stake, while Nissan Motor and China's Dongfeng Motor Corp (東風汽車) control the remainder.
"We are confident in the fast growing Chinese auto market," Yulon Nissan's president Liu Yi-cheng (劉一震) said, predicting that Aeolus Automobile's car sales will more than double to 140,000 units this year from 60,000 units last year, after bright sales performance of 29,191 cars in the first quarter -- up 63 percent from a year ago.
The total number of new vehicles sold in China is expected to grow to 5.8 million units this year from 5.1 million units last year, according to the company.
Despite the price war that started during last year's supply glut, which has since stabilized, the profit contribution from the Chinese investment could grow marginally to more than NT$600 million this year from a similar level last year due to continued strong competition, said Yulon Nissan vice president Wen-Rong Tsay (蔡文榮), who oversees the company's China operations.
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