With the exception of the car rental market, AutoWallis closed a strong year in all areas, underpinned by acquisitions and business developments. The stock exchange automotive company increased the number of vehicles sold by 39.4% to 8,376 units. Despite the market downturn caused by COVID-19 (e.g. in Hungary it was -8%*) organic expansion was 7 percentage points in all vehicle sales, while a further 33 percentage points was due to six transactions realized in 2020. The Sales Report presenting the corporation’s results from last year uses a new breakdown for the sales figures, because the realized transactions will significantly increase the group’s revenue already in 2021, while at the same time they transform the business composition of AutoWallis. In this respect, Gábor Ormosy, the CEO of the company, said that the impact of the transactions would be fully reflected only in the 2021 figures, but for reasons of comparability, the just published report already breaks down the results in accordance with the new business units**. The CEO added that last year’s margin retention was also affected by fluctuations in supply and demand due to the COVID-19 situation and the unfavorable change and volatility of the HUF exchange rate, which was only partially offset by the exceptionally favorable trend in sales units. 

In 2020, the number of service hours in the Retail & Services business unit increased by 32.6 percent to 65,823, taking the impact of transactions into account. Vehicle rental has been negatively affected by the significant drop in tourism and business travel, so the number of rental events decreased by 60.9% to 9,616 units, followed only partially by the fleet size (-28.2%), which was impacted by long-term rental contracts.

*source: DataHouse 

**The previously used breakdown of domestic and international sales is replaced by the categories of Distribution and Retail & Services. (The previously used International Distribution unit included the international branch of the wholesale activities, while the new Distribution business unit comprises all brands distributed in Hungarian and foreign markets by the company as an importer. Thus, the wholesale activities previously included in Domestic Distribution have been moved to Distribution, and the newly formed Retail & Services business unit includes all brands sold in Hungary and in foreign markets, as well as the related service and rental activities.)