We stay Underweight on the automotive sector. While the poor price performance and low valuation reflects the market’s low expectations, we do not see this as a good entry point since no clear signs of industry recovery limits re-rating. A sector catalyst would be an improved economy, which in turn would boost domestic auto demand and loan quality, consequently allowing greater access to auto loans. This would clearly signal an approaching turnaround in the Thai automotive industry and earnings.
10% drop in 2024 auto production, slowed by auto market dive. In 1H24, Thailand produced 761.2K vehicles, down 17% YoY, pulled down by the slow domestic auto market, spiraling down since November 2022 and plummeting 24% YoY in 1H24. Leading the plunge was commercial vehicle sales (39% YoY contraction) since this segment is closely related to business activity, which has been pulled off the rails by the weak Thai economy. We forecast auto production at 1.66mn units or a 10% YoY drop in 2024.
Domestic auto market: No clear signs of recovery yet. Consumer demand and purchasing power (or borrower creditworthiness since most domestic vehicle sales are financed through hire purchase (HP) loans from financial institutions) for discretionary goods such as automobiles are closely tied to the status of the economy. The negative economic backdrop that includes high household debt with slow economic recovery and rising non-performing loan (NPL) and Special Mentioned Loan (SML) ratios in the auto segment, leads us to expect that the domestic auto market has not experienced significant improvement in the near term. Our study using rolling 12-month commercial vehicle sales to track the auto demand shows a decelerating trend. Historical data from 1993 to present shows that an uptrend in the commercial vehicle market took 1.0-7.1 years while the downtrend lasted 2.4-3.6 years. Given this, the recent downtrend in rolling 12-month commercial vehicle sales at 1.5 years suggests the downtrend is not yet ending. We estimate domestic auto sales at 611K units in 2024, a contraction of 21%.
Earnings cut, sector earnings to shrink 25% YoY in 2024. We revise down our forecast sector core earnings by 10% in 2024 and 6% in 2025, with a 25% contraction in sector core earnings in 2024 and some improvement in 2025 to 11% growth.
Underweight; no clear signs of recovery limits re-rating. While the poor price performance and low valuation reflect the market’s low expectations, we do not see this as a good entry point into the automotive sector since there are no clear signs of industry recovery and thus any re-rating is limited. A sector catalyst would be an improved economy, which in turn would boost domestic auto demand and HP loan quality, consequently allowing greater access to auto loans. This would clearly signal an approaching turnaround in the Thai automotive industry and earnings.
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