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AAA AUTO sells over 64,500 cars in Central Europe in nine months

"Although we started this year with the longest lockdown of the COVID pandemic in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, we managed to make up the missing sales once  the countries opened up again and returned to sales of approximately 8,500 cars per month. As a result, we managed to sell 64,716 cars in nine months, this was only 100 cars less year on year same in 2019 (pre COVID019). We consider this a very good result given other circumstances on the market," said Karolína Topolová, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of AURES Holdings, the operator of the international network of AAA AUTO car dealerships.

Out of a total of 64,716 cars, 37,121 were sold in the Czech Republic, 15,200 in Poland and 12,395 in Slovakia.

The used car market has been shrinking since the start of the Coronavirus crisis and used car prices have been rising. "According to our analysis, there has been a significant year-on-year reduction in the volume of used cars on the main used car advertising aggregators in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, and with it a significant increase in their prices. The largest decline in supply was recorded in Poland, where the number of cars on offer fell by 29% and prices rose by 8%. The second largest decline in supply was recorded in Slovakia, by 19%. Prices in this market rose by 10%. The Czech Republic was also affected by the reduction in supply. In total, there was a 14% decrease, followed by a 13% increase in prices," said Petr Vaněček, Chief Operating Officer and Chairman of the Board of AURES Holdings, the operator of the AAA AUTO network. There are a number of reasons for this, most notably production shortfalls and greater interest in individual transport due to concerns about the higher risk of Coronavirus infection in public transport. "Within the AAA AUTO network, we are able to not only maintain but even increase the breadth of our offer thanks to our robust purchasing infrastructure. This includes not only buying at branches, but also the use of mobile buyers, online buying in the countries where we operate and from trusted sources in Western Europe. We take advantage of price and structural differences between markets, monetising our competitive advantage, we are able to offer customers cars across markets," added Petr Vaněček.

AAA AUTO customers are also choosing cars more often from its foreign branches. More than 2,000 customers a month are interested in cars offered in another country, and the number is constantly growing. "The average value of a car in which these customers are interested is around CZK 323,000. This is significantly more than the average value of a car sold in the AAA AUTO network in a local branch without importing from abroad. The clear leaders in terms of interest in the cars offered throughout the Viszegrad region are the Skoda Octavia and Skoda Superb, Volkswagen Passat and Audi A5 and A4," added Petr Vaněček.

The AURES Holdings Group continues to build Driverama, a company dedicated to the online purchase and future sale of used cars in Western Europe. "This spring Driverama launched its new headquarters in Munich and Amsterdam. In the last four months Driverama has opened four new micro-branches, right on schedule. The first three have been established in the cities of Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Herne - with these we have covered Germany's most populous region, the Federal Republic of North Rhine-Westphalia, which has a population of over 17 million.. We have also opened our fourth branch in Berlin, in the Reinickendorf district," said Stanislav Gálik, Chairman of Driverama.

The AURES Holdings Group is also actively promoting the vaccination of its employees against Coronavirus. "We have announced an incentive competition whereby we draw two winners every week from among those vaccinated in each country where we operate, with prizes worth approximately CZK 5,000 CZK, PLN 900 in Poland and €200 in Slovakia. In the first two weeks of the competition we managed to increase the number of vaccinated people in the group by 170. In total, we have almost 1,200 employees vaccinated. We will motivate our colleagues in this way until at least the end of this year," said Karolína Topolová.