Construction machinery sales in May will be bleak

The reporter learned a few days ago that the market performance of roller, loader, bulldozer, and excavator was not satisfactory in May. Many products had a "double drop" in both the chain and year-on-year figures. The industry believes that if the market continues to slump, it will force backward production capacity to withdraw from the market, helping leading companies become bigger and stronger.

Data shows that sales of road rollers, loaders, bulldozers and excavators fell by 29.70%, 25.77%, 29.90% and 23.92% respectively in May.

From the ring data, in addition to a slight increase of 0.62% in the volume of road roller sales in May, the chain loaders, bulldozers and excavators all fell by more than 20% in the chain, being 23.30%, 22.14% and 29.28%, respectively.

For the bleak performance of the market, the China Construction Machinery Trade Network market researcher believes that May is the traditional off-season, which makes the already gloomy market worse, and the small number of projects started is the direct cause of this year's overall recession.

Members of the China Construction Machinery Industry Association Road and Compaction Machinery Subcommittee also stated that the reason why the industry is so sluggish is because the total amount of investment in upstream transportation facilities has shrunk.

From the perspective of highway construction, the association expects that the amount of highway construction investment in 2012 will be at the level of 1 trillion yuan, which is lower than 2011. The total railway investment is not optimistic. In 2012, the Ministry of Railways will coordinate arrangements for investment in fixed assets of 500 billion yuan, of which infrastructure investment will be 400 billion yuan, and the new line will be put on 6,366 kilometers, which is further reduced from 2011.

Market participants expect that the funds for various infrastructure projects will not be put in place in the short term, and the machinery market will experience a period of downturn.

Under normal circumstances, the market downturn will force companies with weak competitiveness to withdraw from the market or accept mergers, which will help leading companies become stronger. From the current data, the competitiveness of leading enterprises is becoming more and more prominent.

Take the excavator as an example. Despite the industry's overall "double down", Sany Heavy Industry (600031) thrived, and its sales in May increased by 8.64% year-on-year, and won the monthly sales championship; sales from January to May remained the second closest to Komatsu. 4000 units have absolute leading edge.

Judging from the data from January to May, Shantui still has 64.60% market share in the bulldozer market, and it is steadily taking the top spot. The leaders of loaders and rollers are Liugong and XCMG.

Insiders pointed out that while the overall industry downturn, the leading companies in the subdivision sector have grown to varying degrees. This phenomenon from another perspective shows that many small and medium-sized companies have a sharper decline in sales than the average.

If this situation continues, it will not be long before many companies will be forced to cut prices. Because many companies do not have sufficient cash flow, they will not be able to win the leading companies in the "price war" and have to withdraw from the market.