Proton Draws Plans To Improve Lotus' Revenues

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 28 (Bernama) -- Proton Holdings Bhd says that its current synergy with Lotus was not the way it wanted it to be but was still keeping the company with long-term plans being drawn to further improve its revenue especially by capitalising on its engineering capability."We have spoken to many parties who are interested to leverage on Lotus capability. We have to go not on a stand-alone basis but Lotus needs to work on strategic alliances with other engineering companies," said managing director Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohd Tahir.Besides the launch of a new model by Lotus in Geneva this week, other plans include positioning Lotus as a training provider but on a much greater scale.Syed Zainal was talking on plans for Lotus at a press conference, here on Monday to announce the national carmaker's third quarter results.Proton made a turnaround with a pre-tax profit of RM96.049 million for the quarter ended Dec 31, 2005 after two consecutive quarters of losses.However, the profitability was lower than the RM175.159 million registered in the same quarter of 2004, basically due to the higher promotions and incentive package as well as other expenses including that of research and development.During the quarter, its car domestic sales rose to 52,418 units while exports of Proton cars from December last year to date stood at 8,858 units.As for unsold cars (encompassing that of the factory, Proton Edar, EON and dealers) during the quarter, he said there was about 30,000 units which was slightly above a month's stock and at still a comfortable level.Meanwhile, Syed Zainal Abidin said Proton would not be releasing any new model in the near future except for the SRM which is on the board for launch this April.Proton also indicated the markets it wanted to be in such as that of traditional markets like United Kingdom, Australia, Asean and West Asia as well as the emerging markets of China and India.At the same time, he said Proton was working hard and aggressively and would pursue its multiple alliances, such as that with Mitsubishi and Petronas, to have better market presence and more products.He said that Proton's original objective of acquiring technology in making cars also remained but added: "But we are realistic to note that we cannot do a full sweep on our own because it costs too much and the market is too competitive and the timing is not right. We will still continue with one or two models of our own and further enhance what we have acquired but we will also be working with other alliances."-- BERNAMA