GM: Second-Quarter US Sales Are the Company’s Best Since 2020

Most automakers reported US auto sales on July 2. Wards Intelligence put June sales at 1.32 million, down 3.4% year over year. The seasonally adjusted annualized selling rate was 15.29 million versus 16.06 million last June. The ransomware attack on leading dealer management software vendor CDK affected sales starting June 19 and Wards estimates a 50,000 unit hit to June sales and a 0.6 million SAAR impact. CDK said on July 2 that substantially all of its over 15,000 dealer customers are back on the system, so we think the industry can make up lost June volume during the third quarter. Dealers will still need to spend considerable time manually entering all the transactions incurred since June 19 into their DMS. Vehicle inventories of about 2.7 million are at levels last seen in early 2021 just before the chip shortage began, and demand is there, especially for foreign automakers like Toyota. We think 2024 US light-vehicle sales will be about 15.8 million-16 million, a 2.9% increase from 2023.