Perodua’s plant in Rawang running on double shifts

Aminar said as at mid-day figure on Thursday, bookings for Bezza has hit 4,028 units. The bookings for Bezza, whose prices ranging from RM37,300 for the 1.0 litre Standard (manual transmission) to RM50,800 for the 1.3 litre Advanced variant (automatic transmission), have been opened since last week.

Aminar said Perodua’s plant in Rawang, Selangor has been running on double shifts since February to get 9,000 units of Bezza ready to enable speedy delivery to customers who have made the bookings.

“Bezza is our candidate for export, but currently we will be focusing our production to meet up the domestic demand first,” Aminar said, but did not refute the possibility of cannibalisation of the Myvi, as well as slower sales of the dated-Alza.

The “Axia”, another Perodua’s EEV model, is still the company’s top seller with monthly sales of between 9,000 and 10,000, this is expected to be followed by Bezza, while Myvi sales are expected to taper off due to the cannibalisation effect.

Meanwhile, MIDF Amanah Investment Bank Bhd (MIDF Research) noted that Perodua’s MyVi is currently exported to Indonesia under the Daihatsu Sirion badge but volumes are still small.

“Our channel checks a few days ago suggest a mid-term target of exports accounting for around five per cent of volumes,” it said.

Despite the buzz and the aggressive sales target for the Bezza, Perodua is maintaining its sales target of 216,000 units for 2016.

Management highlighted risks of possible cannibalisation, especially for the ageing MyVi model which currently generates an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 unit sales per month, accounting for 34 per cent of Perodua TIV.

“As we had highlighted in an earlier report, the Saga only generates around 3,000 to 3,500 monthly sales while Proton’s Iriz 1.3 litre model – which is Proton’s only A/B segment model overlapping pricing of the Bezza – is only generating sales volume of around 500 units a month,” MIDF Research added.

“Fresh entry level buyers are unlikely to be significant given the Bezza’s premium pricing as discussed above. Simple mathematics suggests that almost half of Bezza’s volume could come from cannibalisation of Perodua’s own sales.”