VW eyes further brand sales growth, depends on China

BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen expects global deliveries of its core brand to keep growing in the months ahead but sales are driven almost exclusively by Chinese demand, data published by the German carmaker on Friday showed.

Volkswagen (VW) said brand sales appeared to have turned a corner after growing 4.4 percent to 511,500 vehicles in October, the third straight monthly gain, following a run of mostly declines in the February-to-July period.

The brand's chief executive, Herbert Diess, on Thursday said for the first time that he expects full-year deliveries to exceed the 5.82 million sales reported in 2015. Ten-month brand sales were up 1 percent to 4.89 million cars, VW said on Friday.

"The positive overall trend for the Volkswagen brand has stabilized compared with 2015," brand sales chief Juergen Stackmann said. "The trend is therefore clearly headed in the right direction, but we still continue to work on the challenges the brand must master in some regions."

Except for China where brand sales jumped almost a fifth last month to 278,100 cars, registrations kept falling in the Americas and also declined in Europe because of a 21-percent slump in VW's German home market.

Without Chinese sales, VW brand deliveries actually declined 9 percent in October to 233,400 vehicles and were down 8 percent year-to-date to 2.48 million, according to Reuters calculations.

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Maria Sheahan)

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