Maruti Suzuki disappoints; June sales skid 14%, exports fall 45%

Maruti Suzuki , the country's largest car manufacturer, has disappointed analysts with its June auto sales data on Friday. The company sold 98,840 vehicles in June, down 13.9 percent compared with 1,14,756 vehicles sold in year-ago period, impacted by fire at key vendor's site. Passenger cars and exports hit overall sales growth. Domestic sales declined 10.2 percent to 92,133 units and exports fell 44.7 percent to 6,707 units on yearly basis. The company says it sold total 72,551 units under passenger cars segment, showing a 16.3 percent fall from 86,630 units sold in year-ago period. Mini cars sales - Alto & Wagon R - slipped 19.3 percent while compact cars segment - Swift, Ritz, Celerio, Baleno & Dzire - registered a 12.5 percent degrowth year-on-year in the month gone by. Sales of Dzire Tour, which comes under super compact cars segment, declined 28.5 percent and Ciaz sales, the mid-size car, dropped 24.3 percent in June. Utility vehicles segment outperformed others, which registered a massive 75.5 percent growth by selling 9,708 units. Models like Gypsy, Ertiga, S-Cross and Vitara Brezza come under utility vehicles. Maruti launched its S-Cross model in August 2015, Baleno in October and Vitara Brezza in March 2016. The company sold a total of 3.48 lakh units in April-June quarter, growing 2.1 percent over the same period last fiscal. This includes 3.22 lakh units in the domestic market, reflecting a growth of 5.4 percent over April-June 2015 and exports of 26,103 units, down 26.7 percent YoY. "The growth in quarterly sales is despite the disruption in production during June 2016, due to the unfortunate incident of fire at Subros, a key vendor of the company," says Maruti in its filing. The company expects to recover its production loss during the course of year.