Retail auto sales, not wholesale numbers reflective of actual market trend: Maruti Suzuki sales head Srivastava

The country's largest automaker reported weak sales for December on a month-on-month basis. However its senior executive officer for marketing and sales Shashank Srivastava said the wholesale numbers are not reflective of the market for the month in view, but retail is.  Auto companies' sales numbers primarily comprise their bulk sales to dealers and OEMs.

Maruti Suzuki India’s production in December 2022 was lower by 17.96 percent at 1,24,722 units, according to a regulatory filing by the company. The company had a total production of 1,52,029 units in the same month a year ago.

Srivastava said the auto industry saw a wholesale growth of 8 percent -- 276,000 units against last year's 254,000. "For December, this may not be a good reflection of the actual market conditions for the simple reason that for the last month of the year, usually OEMs and dealers would like to keep the inventory at a minimum, especially because of the model change at the year-end," he told CNBC-TV18, adding that this December was no different.

The auto industry's retail sales however were very good, Srivastava said. "By our estimates (for the industry), the retails have crossed the 411,000 mark. It is the first time ever in Indian automobile history that retails in one month have crossed the 4 lakh figure. So in that sense, it was actually quite a good month, although the wholesale were muted,"  he said.

Maruti Suzuki reported a 9 percent decline in total wholesales at 1,39,347 units in December 2022 compared to the year-ago month. The country's largest automaker, in a statement, said it clocked a total sales of 1,53,149 units in December 2021. It made total domestic wholesales of 1,13,535 units in December 2022, down 9.91 percent compared to 1,26,031 units in the same month in 2021.

Srivastava said Maruti crossed the 206,000-mark in retail sales, which is a growth of almost 26 percent compared to the previous years. he said in December 2021, the same was around 160,000 units.

"So that's a pretty good growth and as a result, the stock level in our factory is almost nil, as also the dealer inventory quite low at less than five days of stock," he said, adding that he thinks it is a good beginning for the year because the company can now look forward to a better production in the next quarter.

Srivastava said he is hopeful there is enough production so the waiting for some models can be reduced. "Our current pending booking is almost at 363,000," he said.

Srivastava said that looking at the wholesale sales for December, around 45 percent of the market was for SUV. "But then as I said, wholesale may not be a good indicator for December. Retail is. But even in retail, there has been actually very good growth for SUVs now. It's almost 43 percent of the overall market in retail as well," he said.

Srivastava added that one important thing about December retails is that this could have been much higher for the SUVs because a lot of pending bookings in the industry and also for Maruti Suzuki is for those models where they did not have enough production. "So that is something – the retails could have been much higher than what they had been in December. Just around 43 percent is the overall share of SUVs now in the industry for retail as well," he said.

The non-SUV market share is beyond 65 percent, he said.

Srivastava said that the demand parameters at present are looking "okay" as far as inquiries and bookings are concerned. "In fact, December inquiries and bookings grew around 19 percent over the previous year, except a couple of red flags that we need to look at carefully, especially on the interest rate front, because now the retail interest rates in response to the increased repo rates have started building in as also the liquidity which is very important for the auto industry," he said.

The Reserve Bank of India last month hiked the repo rate — for a fifth consecutive time — by 35 basis points to 6.25 percent. And according to the minutes of the rate-setting panel that were released on December 21, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said the central bank would continue to hike the repo rate to ward off accentuated inflationary pressures.

Srivastava said that the overall economic growth is something that the company is monitoring keenly because that's something which is highly correlated with the automobile industry's projections.

In 2022, the automaker exported 1.95 lakh vehicles, compared to the previous year's 1.69 lakh units, Srivastava said.

On the drop in sales, the automaker had said in a statement on Sunday that the shortage of electronic components had some impact on the production of vehicles, mainly in the domestic models and that the company took all possible measures to minimise the effect.

Srivastava said that the chip shortage issue is not yet over and he had no idea when it would normalise completely. He said the present chip production level is at 95 percent.