AutoWallis Car Sales Continue to Pick Up

The AutoWallis Group's Retail Division increased its new car sales by nearly 20% in the first nine months of the year, while used car sales grew by 32%. The Wholesale Business of the region's leading car dealer and mobility provider has been steadily increasing its sales since last autumn compared to the same quarter last year, and in the third quarter it again achieved a record high. AutoWallis expects sales in 2024 to substantially exceed last year, supported by organic growth and the Czech acquisition closed in July.

AutoWallis is set to close another record year for vehicle sales after the Group, which is present in 16 countries in the Central Eastern European region, sold 36,346 new and used vehicles in the first nine months of the year, up 4.1% year-on-year. Among AutoWallis' business units, the Retail Business showed the strongest growth, with new vehicle sales up 19.7% to 7,196 units and used vehicle sales up 31.8% to 1,905 units.

The increase was also supported by the acquisition of three BMW dealerships from Czech Stratos Auto, which closed in early July, and sales figures from AutoWallis' Renault and Dacia dealerships in Budapest, which contributed 6%. Retail sales, up by almost a fifth, continue to outperform the Hungarian figures, after the number of new passenger cars registered in Hungary rose by only 7.3%. The number of service hours in the Retail Services business unit rose by 13.8% to 151,050 (almost half of the increase, 6.6%, was due to the Czech acquisition).

In the Wholesale Business Unit, sales have been growing steadily again since last autumn, with the AutoWallis Group selling a total of 27,245 new vehicles, down just 0.8 percent compared to the same period in 2023 (the shortfall was 5. 8% at the half-year point). The slight decline was due to a predominantly technical decline in the first quarter, explained by a combination of the base effect of the previous sales outliers (last quarter of 2022 and first and second quarters of 2023) and the increased sea delivery times in the first half of this year due to the Suez Canal and the situation in the Red Sea.

SsangYong (-1,130 units) played the main role in the apparent decline (compared to a surplus of 1,709 units in Q1 2023), which was only partially offset by other brands. The overall positive trend in the performance of the Wholesale Business Unit is shown by the fact that, compared to the decline in the first quarter of this year, sales jumped from 9,277 units in the second quarter to 10,729 units (+15.6%) in the second quarter of 2023, and from 6,966 units last year to 7,934 units (+13.9%) in the third quarter.