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Bruce Newton29 Mar 2014
NEWS

Mitsubishi predicts sales bounce

But warns 100,000 target for 2017 isn't locked in
Mitsubishi Motors Australia has defended its slow start to 2014 but has also warned a sales target of 100,000 per annum by 2017 imposed by its Japanese parent may not be achievable.
After two months Mitsubishi sales are off 15.6 per cent year-on-year according to official VFACTS figures. The results follow on from 71,528 sales in 2013 – a spectacular 21.5 per cent rise over 2012 and its record as an importer.
Mitsubishi's 2014 decline is dwarfed among the major retail players by Honda, which has had sales fall by 33.1 per cent, and Nissan, which has crashed a massive 43.7 per cent.
Honda puts its results primarily down to the roll-over from old to new generations of the popular Jazz hatch and City mini-car and stock shortages of the Civic five-door hatch. It says the CR-V SUV is down year-on-year because a significant pent-up demand was serviced at launch.
Nissan's issues have already been chronicled and centre around an over-ambitious sales plan which stuffed too many cars into the dealer pipeline in 2013.
MMAL sales director Greg Cook says both its stock and dealer stock numbers have come down over the last 12 months and its issue isn't over-supply but lack of supply.
The company also ran a major Triton and Pajero sale in the early months of 2013 which compounded the difference in results. That is backed up by VFACTS, which shows Pajero (pictured) sales 38.2 per cent down year-on-year and Triton 4x4 40.2 per cent down.
"I think our total stock holding in the dealerships is reduced by 2000 units in the 11 months from April and we have less stock as an organisation," Cook told motoring.com.au. "So we are under no pressure to pump stock into the dealers."
Cook predicted an upswing in sales through the second quarter as Model Year 2014.5 Outlander SUV and Lancer small car and MY15 ASX compact SUV stocks arrived and flowed into the dealer network.
MMA says it is completely out of MY14 ASXs, while Lancer supply is limited because the Mizushima plant where it is built is focussing on production of a popular new generation 'kei' car.
"Business cycles are 12 month cycles and we have some pretty good plans for the future," Cook declared. "We are working on that 12 month cycle. We are still working very closely to our plan ... We have a very strong and robust business model."
MMAL, which stopped building cars in Australia in 2008, has gone through a fundamental restructure since Mutsuhiro Oshikiri took over as CEO in 2012, with a significant turn-over of executive staff, a delegation of sales responsibility away from the Adelaide head office to regions and improved incentives for dealers. 
MMAL revealed the 100,000/2017 sales target to dealers in April last year. It is built into Mitsubishi's global 'New Stage 2016' business plan, which aims to boost sales from 1.1 million in the 2013 financial year to 1.4 million in FY16.
But Cook said achieving 100,000 sales would not come at any cost.
"We will develop our plan towards 100,000 if it fits in with our business plan and if we think we can actually do that," he said. "There is no point doing 100,000 and chasing a goal that's out of sight profitability-wise, or it undoes everything we are trying to do as an organisation.
"It comes back to everything we have done in the last 18 months to get where we are now. We don't want to undo that by having a plan that is too far ahead of ourselves.
"If 90,000 was the right figure that is what we would aim for. If 80,000 was the right figure that is what we would aim for."
Cook said a sales target around 73,000 was on the books for 2014. There is an expectation that will lift in 2015 when the new Triton will be on-sale, followed by new generation Challenger, ASX and Pajero, the latter two previewed by the XR-PHEV and GC-PHEV concepts, which broke cover at the Tokyo motor show last November.
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