MERCEDES-BENZ GROWS MARKET SHARE
WITH another six model launches before the end of the year, Mercedes-Benz Malaysia (MBM) is confident of surpassing last year’s sales of 12,045 units by end of year.
“We are very confident of exceeding last year’s sales figure with the exciting new product launches,” said vice-president for sales and marketing Mark Raine, during the company’s third quarter 2018 (Q3) performance briefing recently.
The company achieved a record high sales volume of 10,143 units in the first nine months of this year, an increase of 16 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Its market share increased to 2.5 per cent from 2.3 per cent in 2017.
Most of the sales come from the locally-produced limousines, namely the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, E-Class and S-Class, which collectively recorded a total of 6,344 units sold.
The company’s premium compact cars comprising the A-Class, B-Class, GLA-Class and CLA-Class recorded 1,258 units sold.
These two segments recorded a growth of 21.1 per cent and four per cent respectively, compared with the third quarter last year.
Mercedes-Benz’s premium SUV range recorded 1,960 units delivered, which translated to a 3.4 per cent increase compared with Q3 2017.
The Dream Cars collection also registered a 40 per cent surge with 570 units sold.
Meanwhile, the financing arm of MBM, Mercedes-Benz Services Malaysia, has continued its growth trajectory in Q3 of 2018, maintaining a serviced portfolio of over RM2.5 billion and continues to finance four out of 10 Mercedes-Benz cars sold in the country.
To diversify its funding sources in anticipation of further growth prospects in the local market, MercedesBenz Services Malaysia has recently issued a RM3 billion corporate bond programme in Malaysia.
Mercedes-Benz Services Malaysia has received a AA credit rating by the independent credit rating agency RAM and its first issuance of RM250 million of the bond programme has been taken up by local investors.
“MBM was established more than 15 years ago. With RM1 billion invested to date, our key focus has been and remains taking a holistic approach to automotive excellence and customer experiences with a customer centric strategy,” said its president and chief executive officer, Dr Claus Weidner.