Toyota Motor Thailand has revised up its car market projections and sales target in 2018 after witnessing healthy growth and rising car distribution in the first half.
The Federation of Thailand Industries reported last Wednesday that the overall car market rose by 19.3% year-on-year to 489,118 units from January to June.
Toyota yesterday reported 141,989 cars sold, up 26.3% compared with last year's first half.
Toyota's sales growth in 2018 is expected to mark the first rise in six years after five years of contraction. Moreover, the company's total market share rose by 1.4 percentage points to 29% as of June.
President Michinobu Sugata said Toyota is very optimistic about the car market, increasing the 2018 projection from 900,000 units earlier to 980,000 cars, a 12.4% rise.
Toyota raised its 2018 sales target from 300,000 cars to 315,000 units, a 31.2% increase from last year's sales.
"We expect to gain a 32.1% market share," said Mr Sugata.
From January to June, every top carmaker except Honda saw strong local sales.
Honda ranks third in the Thai market, posting a slight drop of 2.6% to 59,838 cars sold in the first half.
The majority of the contraction went to Honda's sport utility vehicles (SUVs), which declined by 12.26% to 13,551 units during January to June, but was still the largest segment share.
The SUV segment has seen aggressive competition from two new entrants, MG and Toyota.
Toyota introduced the CH-R in March, entering the SUV segment locally for the first time.
The top four car brands remain unchanged. Mazda moved up from seventh to fifth place, replacing Ford, which dropped to seventh.
The MG brand moved up in sales rankings from 11th at the end of 2017 to ninth in June, surpassing Chevrolet and Mercedes-Benz.
Toyota still controls the highest share in the passenger segment (sedans, hatchback and eco-cars), but lost the top place in pickups in 2017 to Isuzu.
Mr Sugata said the Thai economic outlook has become more favourable with GDP growth being revised up to 4.4%, driven by exports, tourism, government investment in infrastructure projects and improving consumer confidence.
Furthermore, new models and various marketing activities introduced by carmakers have also played a big role in stimulating the Thai auto market.
"We expects these positive factors to accelerate the car market throughout 2018," he said.
For exports in the first half, Toyota's completely built-up (CBU) shipments reached 145,080 units, a 7% increase over the same period last year, with export value standing at 74.25 billion baht.
Mr Sugata said while there was a downward trend in the Middle East market, Toyota's exports to Asia and Oceania increased thanks to Japan and Australia.
The export of Thai-made Hilux Revo to Japan started in last September. The product has been popular with Japanese customers, with accumulated exports from last September to June this year reaching 5,500 units.
In addition, Toyota's auto parts exports totalled 29.88 billion baht. These figures have contributed to total export value of 104 billion baht for Toyota in the first half.
Even with successful first-half growth in CBU shipments, Toyota has maintained its 2018 export target at 300,000 units, the same as last year. Toyota is still the largest car exporter from Thailand, following Mitsubishi and Ford.
Mr Sugata said the situation in the Middle East is still unstable for Toyota, with the region demanding mainly Thai-made pickup trucks.
Vietnamese import regulations have yet to become more favourable for Thai exporters. Toyota only exported 340 cars to that country last month, expecting the same shipment volume in July.