Auto dealer group Zhongsheng Group Holdings Ltd is on track to add 40 more showrooms in China by the end of the year, increasing its number of dealerships to about 180, its chairman and co-founder said on Friday.
Zhongsheng, one of the largest car dealership groups in China, is building up to 25 new showrooms this year and seeking potential acquisition targets to achieve this expansion plan, Zhongsheng Chairman Huang Yi told Reuters in an interview in New York.
While China's once red-hot auto market has started to slow down, Zhongsheng expects to maintain the robust growth in sales and profits it saw in recent years, partly helped by its focus on luxury brands and mid- to high-end models of leading Japanese automakers, said Huang, also one of the firm's two founders.
China's vehicle sales climbed 5.2 percent last year, the slowest since the country's car culture took off at the turn of the century. Luxury cars, however, continued to race ahead thanks to the growing ranks of the moneyed class, with BMW , Mercedes-Benz and Audi all posting more than 35 percent gains in sales last year.
"According to the information we got from automaker customers, sales of luxury brands are expected to increase over 20 percent this year," said Huang, adding that this would compare to some 7-8 percent growth projected for overall vehicle sales in China this year.
Established in 1998, Zhongsheng has grown into one of the largest national auto dealership groups in China, focusing on Mercedes-Benz for the luxury segment and Toyota and Nissan for mid- to high-end segment.
China's once booming auto market, which saw double-digit sales gains in recent years, began to slow down in 2011 after Beijing scrapped tax incentives for small cars, but it still remains the world's largest with some 14.5 million vehicles sold last year - about 2 million more than in the United States.
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