Despite June Sales Declines, Good News for Ford, GM
Ford continues to see demand for its profitable light trucks, while GM's crossover retail sales grew.
Automakers reported June U.S. light-vehicle deliveries to end customers on July 3. The seasonally adjusted annualized selling rate per Automotive News came in at 16.54 million, down from 16.82 million in June 2016 and the lowest SAAR of 2017. June sales declined 2.9% year over year to 1.475 million.
The fleet business had been making up a lot of the sell-down through May, but it appears June’s retail channel--that is, nonfleet--business softened, though not enough to make us change our 2017 forecast of 17.0 million-17.2 million.
LMC Automotive forecast in late June that the June retail SAAR would come in at 13.1 million, the lowest for June since 12.0 million in 2012, but not far off from June 2016’s 13.2 million. Ford also confirmed our February prediction that the industry’s total sales peaked for the cycle in 2016 at 17.54 million, with its head of U.S. sales saying on a July 3 call that even a strong second half of 2017 would not be enough for the industry to eclipse 2016’s full-year total. This is not surprising news to us, but it’s also not a reason to think sales are about to fall off a cliff, as June light-truck sales from several automakers looked fine to us.
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