Motor Vehicles and Parts News
- Dongfeng profit climbs 30 percent
Date: 20-Apr-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
DONGFENG Motor Group Co., China's third-largest automaker, said Thursday profit last year rose 30 percent as ventures with Nissan Motor Co., PSA Peugeot Citroen and Honda Motor Co. sold more cars.
Net income increased to 2.08 billion yuan (US$269 million) from 1.6 billion yuan a year earlier, the company said. That was below the 2.25 billion yuan average of 11 analysts' estimates.
Dongfeng Motor's ventures sold more vehicles as they offered discounts and introduced new models to meet surging demand in the world's second-biggest auto market. Domestic automakers posted a 46 percent increase in combined profit last year, reversing two years of declines.
'The company is on a growth track, as its venture with PSA probably returned to profit last year due to revamped products and higher sales,'' said Alice Chong, an analyst at CIMB-GK Securities (HK) Ltd.
Sales rose 16 percent to 48.3 billion yuan, from 41.7 billion yuan. The automaker proposed a final dividend of 0.04 yuan a share. It didn't pay one in 2005.
China last year became the world's second-largest auto market, after the United States, with sales of 7.22 million vehicles. Sales of passenger cars and commercial vehicles rose 17 percent to a record 847,200 units last month from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co. began making Civic compacts in March last year and sold more than 6,000 of them by the end of June. The model helped Dongfeng Honda increase unit sales by more than half.
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