Despite worldwide sales up 6.1% to 876,400 units, growth of 16.1% in emerging markets and commercial vehicle sales up 10.3%, PSA Peugeot Citroen on Wednesday said group turnover in the first quarter of 2008 was up just 2.3% to EUR15,212m.
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Vehicle and CKD kits sales rose 6.1% to 876,400 units while assembled vehicle sales were up 2.3% to 809,700 units. CKD sales almost doubled, up 92.9%, due to a boost in sales to Iran.
Net sales of finance arm Banque PSA Finance rose 10.1% to EUR524m due to an increase in both average interest rates and a 1.9% rise in total outstanding loans.
Gefco turnover rose 4.2% to EUR925m while net sales at component maker were “stable” at EUR3,245m.
Automotive division turnover rose 2.4% to EUR11,869million or 3.9% on a like-for-like basis.
“This performance is in line with expectations considering the 3% fewer days worked in Q1 2008 compared to Q1 2007,” PSA said.
The automaker said the economic environment in Q1 saw a marked depreciation of the US dollar and the UK pound compared with the euro and a 2.9% downturn in the European automotive market.
But it increased sales “quite spectacularly” in Russia and Mercosur.
European vehicle sales fell 0.9%, with market share for Peugeot and Citroën slipping to 14.0 %, compared with 14.2% in Q1 2007.
In France, market share rose to 32.6 %, the best quarterly performance since 2004.
Light commercial unit sales rose 10.3 % and market share was up 0.6 pts to 19.6%.
In eastern Europe, sales volumes were up 5.4% to 33,200 but China growth was limited to 3.8% in Q1, although the month of March showed signs of a rebound with sales and registrations up 25%.
In Russia, sales were up 29.6% to 9,900 units. Peugeot registrations doubled in comparison with Q1 2007.
In the Mercosur region, the group sold 59,000 vehicles in Q1, an increase of 36.4 %, taking its market share up to 15.9% in Argentina and 5.6% in Brazil, respectively up 0.8 pts and 0.4 pts.
PSA has a number of new model launches in the second quarter and confirmed its 2008 worldwide sales target of volume growth of around 5%.
