July Sales Table: Hangover For GM And Ford, Party Time In Japan And Germany
And now, the hangover: July brings disappointing sales numbers for GM and Ford after June had surprised. GM is down 6 percent in July. Ford is down 4 percent. Even Chrysler Group reports down to earth results with July up only 13 percent after a truly ballistic series of months. In June, Edmunds Senior Analyst Jessica Caldwell politely voiced suspicions that the beautiful June numbers were the product of cosmetics:
“There was great pressure from automakers to close June strong, especially after the unexpectedly weak Memorial Day holiday weekend in May. It is the end of a quarter so undoubtedly they wanted to finish big.”
The problem with these operations is that the next month, there will be headaches. And the headaches are now. The foreigners, Subaru, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen all report solid double digit sales. Analysts did not predict stellar results for GM and Ford, but both came in much lower than analysts predicted. This does not bode well for the stock prices.
At the end of the day, the market rose 9 percent. Ford and GM lost market share. The seasonally adjusted annualized sales rate stands at 14.1 million, as expected by forecasters.
AutomakerJuly 2012July 2011Pct. chng.7 monthTable courtesy Automotive News [sub]
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Is there a way to get retail sales per model per month? That is the core of what automakers sell their cars for (fleet is only for economies of scale or to move inventory that the retail channel won't take). Retail sales champs are the true profitable vehicles - not total sales. Often if you take these into account you'll see that the #1 seller in a category does not make as much money as the #2 and on seller which has better retail sales / higher profit.
Coming to understand that "double digits" means double-digit percentage growth... always?