GM sales: Much better than expected
Bankrupt automaker says vehicle sales tumble 29% in May, its best results of the year. Ford's were its best in ten months.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A day after filing for bankruptcy, General Motors Corp. said its light vehicle sales in May fell much less than anticipated.
GM said total car and light truck sales fell 29% compared to a year earlier. That was a much narrower decline than the Edmunds.com analysts' forecast of a 36.9% drop and better than the 33% retreat in April.
Its four brands which will be dropped in a restructuring of the company - Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer - each reported much bigger sales declines than GM's overall drop, the worst being a 63.5% plunge in Saab sales.
GM announced Tuesday it sold its Hummer line to an undisclosed company. A person with knowledge of the deal told CNNMoney.com GM will sell Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd. in China.
When it emerges from bankruptcy, GM is expected to continue with its four core brands, Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac.
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Sales of light GM (GMGMQ) trucks fell 20.8%.
The May numbers were unadjusted for the extra day this year.
Ford: Ford Motor Co.'s U.S. auto sales fell less than expected in May marking its best performance since July 2008, the automaker reported on Tuesday.
Ford (F, Fortune 500) said total domestic vehicle sales fell 24.3% compared to a year earlier. That was a narrower decline than analysts' forecast of a 28.5% drop and better than the 32% retreat in April.
Though Ford's car models fell by 25.5%, sales of its mid-sized Fusion model were actually up 9.4% last month, the only Ford brand model that rose from last year.
Crossover SUV sales dropped 9%, and traditional SUV sales tanked 37.4%. Overall, Ford truck sales fell 23.4%.
The company said it believed economic conditions were improving and auto sales have bottomed out, though a spokesman for Ford said it expected a bumpy recovery.
"This is still a very fragile industry," said Ken Czubay, Ford's vice president of sales, on a conference call with reporters. "It won't be a straight line up from here to the end of the year."
Changing landscape: Ford's results came as rivals Chrysler and GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. When GM entered bankruptcy on Monday, Ford was left as the lone "Big Three" company that has not requested federal bailout funds or gone bankrupt.
As its domestic rivals flailed, Ford continued to build on its growing market share. But the company said it believed the sales improvement from April to May had more to do with increasing consumer demand than turmoil at its competitors. Accordingly, Ford said it will begin to raise its production as the company sees sales beginning to pick up.
In April, Ford's domestic brands outpaced Toyota's (TM) for the first time since since April 2007, making it the second-largest automaker in terms of monthly U.S. sales behind GM. Ford estimated on Tuesday that its May sales helped it gain the highest market share that the company has enjoyed in three years, even as it scaled back its incentives $200 compared to a year ago.
"Ford is the only volume brand to deliver incentive reductions and still gain retail share," said Czubay. "But the next 90 days will be volatile, as we expect fire sales from our competitors."
Chrysler, Toyota, and all of the other major automakers will report their monthly sales later Tuesday afternoon. Edmunds.com expects industry-wide sales in May to have fallen 36.1% from May 2008, which is slightly worse than April's 34% year-over-year drop.
Analysts predict the combined monthly U.S. market share for Chrysler, Ford and General Motors' domestic vehicles will be 43.9% in May 2009, down from 45.3% a year ago and 46.6% in April.
Also Tuesday, Japanese automaker Nissan reported May sales fell 33.1%, better than the 35.1% analysts expected. |
