Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, yesterday kept its sales target unchanged for this year, but withdrew the full-year forecast for Taiwan’s new car sales amid US tariff uncertainty.
The company said it was less affected by the tariff issue as its new vehicle sales this year have increased 4 percent year-on-year.
The company said that as it manages to buck the local car market’s downtrend, it is sticking to its new car sales target for this year of 165,000, compared with 159,000 units sold last year.
Photo: CNA
Hotai said its market share target remains at 36.7 percent, versus 34.9 percent last year.
New car sales in Taiwan tumbled 15.7 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of this year to 234,450 units, as consumers took a wait-and-see attitude, and expected tariff cuts on imported US cars and a lower commodity tax.
To stimulate the auto market, legislators last week approved a five-year extension to commodity rebates to the end of 2030. Consumers were eligible to pay up to NT$100,000 (US$3,270) less commodity tax per car when retiring old cars, but the rule has also become applicable to those who only buy new cars.
Hotai at the beginning of this year predicted that the domestic car market would record new vehicle sales of about 450,000 units this year, down 1.53 percent from 457,000 units last year. The company dropped its projection yesterday.
The company’s net profit tumbled 32.54 percent to NT$3.96 billion in the second quarter, from NT$5.87 billion in the same period last year. The company attributed the decline to lower asset disposal gains and fewer tax incentives.
On a quarterly basis, net profit declined 22 percent from NT$5.08 billion.
Earnings per share fell to NT$7.1 last quarter, from NT$10.54 a year earlier and NT$7.73 the prior quarter.
In the first half of this year, net profit totaled NT$8.26 billion, down 29.7 percent year-on-year, with earnings per share dropping from NT$21.1 to NT$14.83, Hotai said.
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