GM January Sales Slide 4% as Pickup Sales Falter

By Paul Ausick Updated Jan 12, 3:16PM EST · Published Feb 1, 11:15AM EST

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[cnxvideo id=”625482″ placement=”ros”]General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) on Wednesday posted total January U.S. sales of 195,909 vehicles, a decrease of 3.8% compared with January 2016. Retail deliveries fell 4.9 points for the month to 155,010 million units. and fleet deliveries added 0.9 percentage points to account for 20.9% of total monthly sales.

GM’s new vehicle sales for January were forecast at 195,000 by analysts at Kelley Blue Book (KBB). The analysts also estimated an average transaction price of $39,559, down 1.8% month over month and up 4.4% year over year. KBB does not include applied consumer incentives to its calculation.

The company said January’s average transaction price was $34,500, a new record for the month. The company also said that January incentive spending equaled 12.7% of its average transaction price (about $4,380).

January sales of the company’s top-selling Silverado pickup fell by 6.1% year over year to 35,553 units, and GMC Sierra sales slipped 4.5% to 13,732 units.

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Sales of the Colorado midsize pickup rose 16.4% to 6,413 units.

Cadillac retail sales increased 1.2% in January, following a 3.2% increase in December. Cadillac sales totaled 10,298 units in January.

Total Chevrolet deliveries in January decreased by 1.9% year over year to 135,170 units, with retail sales falling 4.6% to 103,808 units.

The company’s Buick brand saw a year-over-year sales drop of 28.2% in January, including a decrease of 18.5% in retail sales.

For the auto industry as a whole, GM’s forecast for the seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of sales is 17.6 million for January.

GM continues to pull out of the fleet sales business, having chosen instead to focus on the higher margin retail business. The effect is to depress volume sales, and that impact has affected GM’s sales for the past several months.

GM’s stock traded down about 1.1% Wednesday morning, at $36.22 in a 52-week range of $26.69 to $38.38. The 12-month consensus price target on the stock is $38.45.

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About the Author Paul Ausick →

Paul Ausick has been writing for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.