Mazda Motor Corp aims to defend its share in the sinking European market as it rolls out the remodelled Mazda3 compact car - its best-selling car - later this year, a top executive said. Mazdas sales in Europe rose 9.2 percent to about 340,000 in 2008, lifted by a big jump in Russia.
But the trend has reversed this year, with its sales in the region falling 13 percent in January, including a 7.5 percent fall in Russia. "Our aim is to hold our share in the business," Mazda Motor Europes chief financial officer, Jeffrey Guyton, told Reuters at the Geneva Motor Show. Mazda had 1.8 percent of the European market in 2008.
If Mazda maintains its share, its sales in the region would fall around 20 percent based on Guytons own projection for industry-wide European sales. He stopped short of forecasting when the market would bottom out, adding that the second half of this year would probably be tougher than the first. "As long as consumers have as much uncertainty about jobs and prices as they do now they are not going to be buying cars," he said.
The tough spell is likely to endure for at least two years, he said, citing historical trends after a deep recession. In the meantime Guyton said Mazdas priority was to reduce costs but at the same time turn investments into new products.
In that respect Guyton said Mazda has an advantage over some rivals because it has few factories outside Japan, meaning it had relatively little cash tied up in plants and equipment. "The rest of the working capital is inventory, and that can be managed more efficiently," he said.
Guyton noted that Mazda was one of the few, if not only, Japanese carmakers to export cars to Russian markets via the trans-Siberian railway, which helps to cut the transportation time to 10-14 days compared with at least 35-40 days by ship. Mazda, Japans fifth-biggest automaker, is expecting an operating loss of 25 billion yen ($257 million) in the year ending March 31, hit hard by the yens rise against major currencies.
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