Hero Honda to launch 6 more bikes this fiscal

Excerpts from Your Stocks on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » ALSO READ See latest News about Hero Motocorp See previous management interviews See what other Experts & Brokerages are saying about Hero Motocorp Hero Motocorp BSE | NSE 10/02/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Hero Motocorp?

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Anil Dua, Senior VP-Marketing and Sales, Hero Honda , spoke about the latest happenings in his company and sector. Below is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Anil Dua on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: For you particularly it has been a very marginal increase--about 3.5 lakh units--since last year. Could you tell us how has this particular month been for you and how the festival sales looked and what can we expect from hereon?

A: It has been an excellent month. We have to look at the overall picture the retails have been extremely good. The festival season last year for Hero Honda was a big record and we bettered that record so it has been the best ever festival season that Hero Honda has had.

The dispatches you have to remember that last year October with that kind of a record actually past in two festivals, Dessera and Diwali. This time the festivals were split over September and October, and therefore, you are talking of half festival period in October versus a complete festival period in October last year. Dispatches are not comparable and still it is commendable that we have actually shown a marginal growth and we managed to better upon a complete festival period performance of last year October. The underlying sentiment is that the retails have been record retails. Our dealer stocks are lowest ever and the situation is looking very buoyant and good.

Q: Although it is not fair to really compare on a month-on-month basis considering pre-festive the inventories are high but still if you look at it there is a slight decrease a month-on-month if you could just give us the kind of movement that you might see. Are you expecting to see any kind of slippage in sales or do you think you can maintain this kind of growth?

A: We certainly plan to maintain this kind of growth because on month-on-month comparisons if you go back to any year are not very relevant because what happens is that the month before the festival period you really tend to stock up and your dispatches tend to go high.

So typically the pre-festival month is the highest month in most of the years. In line with that September this year being both the pre-festival month as well as the Dassera month was a very big month for us. Indeed August itself was extremely big for us; so if you look at these three months August-September-October we have three months continuously of 3.5 lakh plus. That has never happened in the past. So this is actually extremely good set of numbers and going forward we see that the same kind of momentum will be maintained.

We are seeing very good demand. As you know that there have been holidays in the month of October, there have been festival holidays we have also a lot of demand, a lot of booking which we will cater to in the month of November, and therefore, we are looking forward to a great November as well.

Q: You had planned 8-9 launches this year, about one of your product has been launched if you can tell us for the rest of the year what can you expect as far as launches and also product wise? Could you tell us about the new launches? 

A: We have made three launches ahead of the festival period. One has been the ZMR which is the high-end 225 cc premium bike loaded with all features. It has done very well. The second one is the Splendor Plus (+) our market brand reached a landmark of one crore plus bikes, so we have launched a commemorative special addition ahead of the festival which once again has got tremendous response. Third launch has been in the 150 cc segment where we have refreshed and rejuvenated our great selling Hunk brand. Thus, these three launches have happened ahead of the festival. Another six launches or so you will see in the balance of this fiscal.

Q: If you breakup your product wise. If you could tell us 150cc segment which is seeing traction, which are the products that are looking extremely smart?

A: One of the reasons behind our growth has been that we have a brand or two in almost every segment that is doing extremely well and really pulling up our growth. In the 100 cc segment there are traditional Splendor and Passion which are doing very well. I would like to make a special mention of Passion Pro the self start 100cc bike that we had launched which is doing extremely well. Then looking at 125 cc segment Glamour has been doing very well for us and pulling up our growth.

In the premium segment CBZ Xtreme is really driving our growth, we are selling very good numbers in CBZ Xtreme and now Karisma and ZMR are also driving the very upper end.

I must also add Pleasure which has been really the Swiss Ford because it has been growing very healthily ytd in the seven months we are growing more than 50% over already a very large base. So we have a pretty much all round growth that we are seeing here.