Honda Cars India ends 2021 in the green reporting sales growth at over a quarter
It has been a while since Honda launched an altogether new car in India. Its car lines remain limited whereby Honda competes in rather few segments here. While the company has been in business here for long, it follows lean segment approach that has resulted in its reliance on its few offerings.
The market has long followed projections and jumped onto UV glory but Honda’s reliance remains on sedans. WRV its only offering in the widely defined UV segment sees sales trailing far behind its leading sedans, City and Amaze. The same is true for the sub 4 metre UV crossover segment wherein WRV sales trails the leaders by thousands.
Honda Car Sales Dec 2021
For December 2021, Honda Cars India reports wholesales at juts below 8k units, down from 8,638 units sold in Dec 2020. YoY sales decline is reported at 7.7 percent at volume loss of 665 units. MoM sales growth is reported at 46.11 percent up from 5,457 units at volume gain of just over 2.5k units.
Of all quarters, Q4 2021 was wholly in the red. This however wasn’t the worst quarter of the year. In Q1 2021 sales was reported at 27,727 units, up from 16,205 units at volume gain of 11.5k units. Q2 volumes were at a low of 15,871 units.
However considering base sales for the same 3 months in 2020 were at an all time low owing to Covid-19 pandemic control measures that the quarter ended in green. Together H1 2021 sales is reported at 43,598 units.
Q3 2021 sales were steady despite September sales decline at a third, down to 6,765 units. Q3 sales stood just below 24k units. Q4 2021 sales fell to 21,538 units, down from 29,464 units. Sales decline is reported at 26.90 percent at volume decline of 7,926 units.
H2 2021 sales fell to 45,535 units at volume loss of about 7k units, down from 52,555 units. sales decline for the last 6 months stood at 13.36 units. Sales for the year grew to 89,133 units, up from 70,533 units. Volume gain stood at 18,600 units at sales growth of 26.37 percent. This is largely owing to low base sales of 2020.
Supply-side challenges
Yuichi Murata, Director, Marketing and Sales, Honda Cars India Ltd said, “Year 2021 continued to be a challenging year with the ongoing pandemic, but I think we learnt to cope much better with it. Despite the COVID-led and supply-side challenges, HCIL domestic volume grew by 26% in CY’21 with strong performance of our best sellers Amaze and City.
The addition of new export destinations for Honda City to left hand drive markets boosted our exports significantly last year. Our December despatches were in line with our production output which continued to be impacted by global chip shortage.”
