Mahindra & Mahindra February sales plunge 42% to 32,476, exports down 40%

Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M), a part of the USD 20.7 billion Mahindra Group, on Sunday reported a 42 per cent fall in total sales at 32,476 units in February. The company had sold 56,005 units in the same month last year, M&M said in a regulatory filing.

In the domestic market, sales declined by 42 per cent to 30,637 units in the month of February as against 52,915 units in February 2019, M&M said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

M&M's exports plunged 40 per cent to 1,839 units as compared with 3,090 units in the year-ago month.

In the passenger vehicles segment, which includes utility vehicles, cars and vans, M&M witnessed a decline of 58 per cent at 10,938 vehicles as against 26,109 vehicles in February last year.

In the commercial vehicles segment, the company sold 15,856 vehicles in February 2020, as against 21,154 vehicles in February 2019.

In the Medium and Heavy Commercial Vehicles segment, Mahindra sold 436 vehicles for the month as against 686 units in the year-ago month.

Commenting on sales numbers, Veejay Ram Nakra, Chief of Sales and Marketing, Automotive Division, M&M said, "The ramp-down of BS-IV vehicle production has been in line with our plan for February. However, because of the unforeseeable challenges on the parts-supply from China, our BS VI ramp-up has been affected."

This has resulted in a high de-growth in billing volume for February and dealer inventory is now under 10 days, he said.

"Going into March, we anticipate the challenge on parts-supply to continue for another few weeks, before we get back to normalcy," Nakra added.

Meanwhile, rival Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) reported a decline of 1.1 per cent in February sales at 147,110 units compared to 1,48,682 units sold in February last year. Maruti's total exports were up by 7.1 per cent at 10,261 units as against 9,582 units in the corresponding month last year.

By Chitranjan Kumar

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