How did leading car dealerships do in the year of Covid?
How did leading car dealerships do in the year of Covid?
Vietnam’s leading car dealerships saw their fortunes slump in 2020 as sales fell sharply, though the main Mercedes-Benz seller bucked the trend with a huge improvement in numbers.
Cars stranded on Nguyen Trai Street in Hanoi. Photo by VnExpress/Phuong Son.
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City Auto, a Ford and Hyundai dealership, and Vietnam’s largest car dealership Savico reported sharply lower revenues, but Haxaco, the Mercedes-Benz distributor, said profits rose by 150 percent.
City Auto said sales were down by 11 percent to VND5.67 trillion ($246.73 million) and post-tax profits by 96 percent to VND2 billion, a five-year low.
Savico, which distributes Toyota, Volvo, Honda, and Mitsubishi, reported a 12 percent fall in revenues to VND16.13 trillion.
Both companies also attributed the fall in revenues to intense competition, which forced them to cut prices.
But Haxaco reported profits of VND125 billion on revenues of VND5.57 trillion.
Its CEO, Do Tien Dung, said the company had a successful 2020 despite Covid owing to its strategies to expand market share and the cut in first-time car registration fees by half.
Auto sales fell by 8 percent, with passenger car sales decreasing by 7 percent in 2020, according to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association (VAMA), which said even price cuts could not attract consumers who were busy tightening their belts amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
