Hyundai Motor sales were halved to 76,655 units in July from 154,430 units a year ago, as an ongoing strike from late June severely reduced its car production while inventory was not enough to offset the production losses, Dow Jones reported.
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Hyundai’s July exports reached 36,447 units, down 57% on year, it said in a statement cited by the news agency.
Dow Jones said Hyundai’s home market sales skidded 42% year on year to 40,208 units in July, even though the government granted a cut in excise tax on car purchases starting from July 12 to revive weakening local consumption.
The July sales were 40% lower from a month ago with exports plunging 55% and local sales down 14%, the report added.
“The July local sales figure is the worst monthly data since February in 1999 when Korea was still mired in the Asian financial crisis…We lost our market due to the strike,” Hyundai Motor spokesman Jake Jang told Dow Jones.
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By GlobalDataJang also reportedly said Hyundai Motor was forced to entirely stop shipping cars overseas on Thursday due to a lack of inventory particularly for overseas orders. Hyundai Motor has halted its entire operations this week for a company-wide summer holiday, Dow Jones noted.
The news agency said there was only one day in July that Hyundai Motor operated its production lines for the normal 20-hour working schedule, as 39,000 unionised workers of its total 50,000 employees have continued partial or general strikes intermittently since late June.
Hyundai Motor estimated its production losses will exceed 1.3 trillion won and failed to export 68,000 units out of 109,000 vehicle orders from overseas in July, the report added.
In July, Hyundai Motor’s three manufacturing units overseas -in India, Turkey and China – sold a total of 21,285 units, doubling from the 10,407 units sold a year ago, Dow Jones said.
During the first seven months of this year, Hyundai Motor’s car sales, including sales from the three overseas units, amounted to 1.07 million units, up 3.4% year on year, the report added.
Overseas sales climbed 19% year on year to 685,499 units during the January-July period, while domestic sales dropped 16% year on year to 383,122 units, Dow Jones reported, adding that Hyundai Motor targets sales of 2.038 million vehicles in 2003, including 1.2 million exports.
