TOYOTA Motor Philippines Corp. (TMPC) is aiming for a 200,000 unit sales by 2020 but may temper its sales campaign this year to “strengthen fundamentals” in order to reach the goal.
“We are going to aim for 200,000 units by 2020, but we have to strengthen fundamentals this year,” Sugata said to members of the media on Thursday evening.
The 200,000 unit sales for Toyota Philippines represents 40 percent of the forecasted total industry demand of 500,000 units in 2020.
For TMPC, strengthening fundamentals will mean refocusing their strategy from a more ambitious sales target this year to other objectives.
“This year instead of the number of sales, we will focus on after-sales service. Last year we saw around 737,000 that are serviceable and we don’t want to sacrifice customer satisfaction,” said Michinobu Sugata, president of TMPC to reporters on Thursday evening, further noting that their target for 2015 is at 110,000 units.
This is a 4-percent improvement over their total sales of 106,000 in 2014.
Sugata said that as an effect of focusing on expanding their service capacity, market share may be affected if overall industry car sales swells this year.
“We anticipate some decline in market share but there will still be growth in terms of number,” said Sugata, who said that profitability of the company will not be affected.
The focus on after-sales service, said Sugata, is a result of the robust growth of Toyota vehicles in the past years. Its growth may have been too rapid for TMPC to keep their servicing capacity at par.
“We will have to cement fundamentals again in 2015. This will be a transition period for future growth,” Sugata said
The company aims to ramp up after-service sales and parts to compensate the modest car sales target.
TMPC raked in P100 billion in revenues in 2014, a 30- percent increase from 2013. Between 20 percent and 25 percent of the amount is from the sales of parts, while the rest is from vehicles.
Vehicle sales, in terms of value can increase by 5 percent this year, while parts can grow to 10-15 percent, surmised Sugata.
Sugata said consumers may expect an increase in vehicle prices, starting with the Innova next month, as a result of its increase in production cost.
The company aims to invest P2.5 billion this year to gear up for a full model change of the Innova.
TMPC also aims to expand its dealership network by 10 this year, or from the 45 existing dealerships to 55.
The market leader in the automotive industry aims to launch new models this year, starting with the Alphard on Thursday, but will have less introductions in 2015 compared to 2014.