AFP reported that Skoda Auto's first quarter sales rose by 11.8% YoY to a record of 242,700 cars, with a boost from China and India.
The car maker said in a statement that it had set another all time high in March 2012 when it raised monthly sales by 12.1% on a 12 month basis to a record 95,200 units.
Mr Juergen Stackmann board member in charge of sales and marketing at Skoda Auto said that "Bucking the trend, we managed to raise sales in the difficult conditions of the global market. In the coming months, we will expand the range of our models with new, attractive cars."
The company founded in 1895, which sold a record high 879,200 units in 2011, raised sales in western and eastern Europe including Russia, and posted record sales volumes in China and India in the first quarter.
In China, Skoda Auto sold more than 59,200 cars in the first quarter, up by 8.9% from the figure a year ago, while Indian clients bought more than 11,500 Skoda cars, a growth of 40%.
The top selling model in the first quarter was Skoda Octavia with 109,400 units sold, ahead of the smaller Skoda Fabia model with 67,800 units. Skoda said earlier it expected to raise global sales to 1.5 million units by 2018.
Skoda Auto is the biggest car maker in the Czech Republic, where the economy is heavily dependent on the car industry which made up 21% of total industrial output and 22% of all exports in 2010.
The other large car producers are TPCA, a JV of Japan's Toyota with France's PSA Peugeot Citroen and South Korea's Hyundai. The three plants raised combined output by 11.44% on an annual basis to a record high 1,194,981 units in 2011.
Source - AFP
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