Audi Bucks Trend In June With 1.3% Rise In Car Sales

"We will finish on target - achieving our sales forecast of 900,000 cars in 2009," Audi executive board member Peter Schwarzenbauer said in a statement, adding that the company's current order intake confirms its outlook for the full year.

Audi, the premium brand of Volkswagen AG (VOW.XE), Europe's largest automaker by sales, posted a 9.7% sales decline to around 466,000 cars in the first six months of the year.

"Since April we see that sales are stabilizing. The trough of the crisis is reached," Schwarzenbauer told reporters during a telephone conference.

He said Audi may return to its record sales level of 1 million cars reached in 2008 in two or three years' time, with annual sales of the upcoming small A1 model accounting for around 80,000 vehicles.

Demand for cars deteriorated sharply toward the end of last year as credit markets turned sour and consumer confidence waned amid the financial crisis. Additionally, luxury car makers received less support than mass market manufacturers from government-backed incentive schemes to trade in old cars as these programs mainly fostered sales of smaller vehicles.

On Tuesday, German rival BMW AG (BMW.XE) posted a 13% sales decrease for its core brand last month to 105,220 cars. This translates into a 19% sales decline to 513,591 vehicles in the first half of the year.

The world's second-largest manufacturer of premium cars after BMW, Daimler AG's (DAI) Mercedes-Benz brand, experienced a 5.4% fall in sales in June compared with the same month last year to 100,300 cars. Mercedes-Benz's sales in the January-to-June period were down 19% compared with last year at 483,300 cars. BMW and Mercedes-Benz both noted, however, that markets appear to be stabilizing as the pace of the downturn is slowing.

Audi in recent months narrowed the sales gap with its two German peers, mainly due to the launch of important new or revamped models, along with a favorable regional sales mix, including a relatively small presence in the shrinking U.S. market and a large presence in the growing Chinese market.

Among the key models driving Audi's sales are the new-generation of its best-selling A4, the new Q5 small sports-utility-vehicle and the new A5 coupe.

Schwarzenbauer said Audi's U.S. sales are expected to fall around 10% on the year in 2009, compared with a slump in the overall market of around 30%. He said Audi plans to launch a hybrid version of the Q5 in the U.S. at the end of 2010.

In 2008, the Ingolstadt-based automaker fell short of its initial expectations with 87,760 cars sold in the U.S. In the first six months of 2009, Audi's U.S. sales were down 16% on the year at 37,845 cars.

BMW and Mercedes-Benz both sell about three times as many cars in the U.S. per year and were thus hit significantly harder by the dramatic market downturn and eroding residual values.

Schwarzenbauer said Audi's sales in China are expected to come in at more than 130,000 cars this year after 119,598 in 2008. China is Audi's second-largest market after its German home turf.

Audi said domestic sales soared 18% in June to 27,679 cars as the scrapping scheme in Germany fueled demand for its A3 and A4 models. Schwarzenbauer said Audi expects to sell a total of 28,000 cars this year under the scrapping scheme.

Company Web site: www.audi.de

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