PROTON Holdings Bhd sold 13,216 vehicles last month, its highest monthly sales volume since June 2012.

Four models ended July as sales leaders in their respective segments as overall sales grew by 37.3% (13,216 versus 9,623) over June 2020 and increased by 45.7% (13,216 versus 9,072) over the same month last year.

Proton Saga once again posted the highest sales numbers and led the A-segment sedan market with 5,421 units sold last month.

Proton’s C-segment SUV, the X70, saw 3,087 units sold, followed by its the B-segment sedan, Persona (3,043 units) and the C-segment MPV, Exora (792 units).

Proton Edar Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Roslan Abdullah said there has been a positive effect on other areas of the business as a result of the encouraging sales.

“For instance, Proton Commerce, our in-house vehicle financing provider, saw an increase of 100% in the number of loans disbursed compared with the previous month.

“For August, Proton looks to continue to excite the market and stimulate sales in preparation for more model introductions later in the year,” Roslan said in a statement.

The national car maker also said the Malaysian car sales are continuing to rebound in July as a combination of tax-free incentives and consumer demand, pushing Total Industry Volume (TIV) to a 13-month high. 

Proton has been a beneficiary of the increase in sales as Malaysian automotive brands once again dominated the market to account for an estimated 63.2% of sales (as at July 2020).

On year-to-date, Proton’s market share figure as at July stood at a forecast 21.8%, a growth of 6.7% over the same time period last year.

With the growth in sales, it said the volume gap compared with 2019 for Proton has shrunk to just 4.2% (50,294 units vs 52,499 units), which is significantly less than the forecast gap for TIV at 33% (230,929 units vs 347,177 units). – Bernama, August 4, 2020.