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South Korea Autos Report Q3 2011
Business Monitor International, June 2011, Pages: 46
Business Monitor International's South Korea Autos Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, auto associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on South Korea's automotive industry.
South Korean new vehicle sales for 2010 totaled 1,465,426 units (1,217,764 passenger cars plus 247,662 commercial vehicles), an increase of 5.1% y-o-y. Two interest rate rises in January and March 2011 (taking rates to 3.0%) have generated a dampener for vehicle sales in the first half of the year. Further interest rate hikes are on the cards (most likely two more 0.25% increases during the remainder of 2011).
However, car sales growth should remain positive in 2011. Although real economic growth is forecast by our macroeconomic team to slow this year (from over 6% in real terms last year), consumer demand should remain reasonably resilient in the face of the tightening of credit, as disposable incomes continue to rise. New vehicle sales in the first three months of the year bear out our cautiously positive stance – sales on the domestic market rose 3.8% y-o-y, to 362,853 units, according to KAMA. March - the latest month for which data was available as we went to press - saw an 8.4% y-o-y rise to 134,079 units, thanks in part to the debuts of new models including Hyundai’s Avante and Kia’s Morning. KAMA is targeting domestic sales growth in the order of 3.4% for 2011. We continue to target 3.5% sales growth for 2011(unchanged from the forecast we made in our last quarterly update). Beyond this point, we would suggest the domestic market then has scope to grow in the order of 5% per annum over the remainder of our forecast period to 2015. This would indicate total domestic vehicle sales of 1.84mn in 2015.
South Korea produced 4,271,741 vehicles in 2010, an increase of 21.6% y-o-y. This performance means that South Korea remains the world’s fifth-largest automobile manufacturer and accounts for some 5.5% of total global auto production. Looking forward, KAMA believes that automobile production can grow in the order of 4.8% over the course of this year. Last quarter, we penciled in a slightly more optimistic forecast than KAMA, of 5% for 2011. In the first three months of the year, production of new vehicles in South Korea rose 10.9% y-o-y, to 1,080,942 units. However, strong base effects were apparent in the first two months of the year, as a result of relatively weak production in January and February 2010. Sales in March 2011 rose by a less robust 3.6% y-o-y, to 395,899 units. As such, we retain our full-year forecast for a 5% increase in vehicle production.
Last year was another excellent year for Hyundai Motors and Kia Motors, which recorded global market shares of 5.2% and 3.1% respectively in 2010. Hyundai generated a net profit of KRW5.27trn while Kia chalked up KRW2.25trn. Meanwhile, GM Daewoo – now rebranded GM Korea – and Ssangyong generated profits, after years of struggling with losses.
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