Sazgar’s SUV Sales Crash 76% in July After Record-Breaking June Surge

LAHORE: Sazgar Engineering Works built almost three SUVs for every one that found a buyer in July, a gap wide enough to raise real questions about how fast Pakistan's premium vehicle market is actually growing.

The Lahore-based automaker's own numbers tell the story. Its passenger and off-road plant, which assembles Haval and BAIC-branded models through a joint venture with China's Great Wall Motor, turned out 1,778 units last month and moved just 663. That leaves 1,115 vehicles sitting unsold inventory the company will need to work through before it can justify running the line at full tilt again.

Sazgar Sales July 2026 Fall

The three-wheeler business, by contrast, is running close to capacity. Sazgar's rickshaw plant on Raiwind Road produced 3,037 units in July and sold 2,562 of them an 84 percent sell-through rate, more than double the SUV line's 37 percent. The company has built motorized rickshaws since 2005, holds close to 30 percent of Pakistan's three-wheeler market, and became the country's first licensed electric-rickshaw manufacturer in 2024. That older, lower-margin business is currently doing more to move product off the factory floor than the SUV line the company has spent years building up.

Also Read: Sazgar Sells 3,240 Vehicles in May as Demand Keeps Pace With Production

The timing complicates a growth narrative Sazgar has spent three years constructing. Since striking its Haval and BAIC partnerships, the company has positioned itself as the fastest-expanding challenger to Toyota and Honda's long grip on Pakistan's passenger vehicle market a bet that helped drive full-year revenue to Rs108.69 billion in FY2025, up 88.57 percent, and pushed net income past Rs16 billion. Investors have rewarded that story: SAZEW shares climbed roughly 69 percent over the past year and closed near Rs1,995 in mid-July, with seven analysts holding a "Strong Buy" rating and an average price target of Rs2,579.

That target assumes SUV volumes keep expanding. July's numbers don't confirm that assumption, and they don't rule it out either. A single month of soft sell-through could reflect nothing more than a slow buying period, dealer restocking ahead of a new variant, or financing conditions that eased or tightened after the filing period closed Sazgar's disclosure doesn't say which, and no further detail is available yet. What the filing does establish is the size of the gap: production nearly triple sales, in a segment the company has staked its next phase of growth on.

Sazgar reports its next earnings update on September 2, and August's production-and-sales filing due in the same window most companies file mid-month will be the first real test of whether July was a blip or the start of a pattern. Either way, the company's decades-old rickshaw business, not its newer SUV bet, is the one paying the bills this month.