Sales of Mazda vehicles in China rose 22% in the first three months of this year, the automaker said.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Some 37,217 vehicles were sold, a record for the period, leading the carmaker to forecast a 33% year on year jump to 170,000 vehicles this year.
Reuters said Mazda reported March sales up 18% to 14,239 vehicles, driven by sales of the locally-assembled 6 sedan.
The Chinese market grew overall by 10.3% last month.
Mazda has a three-way car manufacturing joint venture in China with top shareholder Ford and Changan Automobile, which has a separate venture with FAW Car.
In February, Mazda Motor Corporation said it expects to post a group net loss of JPY13bn instead of a previously projected JPY50bn profit for the financial year ending 31 March as the decline in global vehicle sales and the yen’s appreciation had been faster than predicted earlier.
For the first three quarters of fiscal 2008, Mazda reported group net profit down 35.9% to JPY28.86bn on sales off 16.7% to 2.09 trillion yen.
