By Nandan Mandayam
(Reuters) -Hyundai Motor India reported a lower third-quarter profit on Tuesday, hurt by easing domestic sales and exports alongside higher discounts, and said it expects industry-wide car sales to remain tepid next fiscal year.
Hyundai is India’s second-biggest carmaker and its 14% market share trails only Maruti Suzuki’s 40%. The Korean carmaker counts India among its top markets globally.
While its domestic sales dipped 0.1%, exports slid 7.5%, bringing down overall sales by 2.4%. That led to a 1.3% revenue dip, while profit declined about 19% to 11.61 billion rupees (about $134 million).
The ‘Creta’ sport utility vehicle (SUV) manufacturer is the first carmaker to report quarterly earnings in the world’s third-largest auto market, where demand has tapered after surging in the last few years.
“Broadly, we believe low-single digit growth (of industry-wide domestic car sales) should continue in 2025-26 as well,” Hyundai Motor India Chief Operating Officer Tarun Garg told reporters.
Car sales in India have stalled in this fiscal year, growing just 1.8% between April and December 2024, far slower than the 7.4% rise seen in the same period a year earlier.
They grew 4.5% in the October-December quarter, helped by India’s demand-driving festival season and high discounts.
Hyundai’s sales, however, dipped as heightened competition trimmed sales growth of its margin-boosting SUVs to 4%, from a 34.5% growth in the year-ago quarter.
Chief Executive Officer Unsoo Kim told reporters that Hyundai India was boosting exports to Africa to offset the impact of lower shipments to its key Middle East market.
Hyundai India sells a little over three-fourths of its cars in India, and exports the rest to the Middle East, South Africa, and parts of Latin America.
Rivals Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors will report their December quarter results on Wednesday.
($1 = 86.5330 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Meenakshi Maidas and Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
