The economy is supposed to be slowing down in its growth path, right? Then why are car sales doing so well? Edmunds.com just released its latest forecast for new vehicle sales showing strong growth. Including fleet sales, July sales will be 1,064,400 units. That would represent 8.4% growth over July 2009 and would represent 8.9% growth from June 2010. Focal points are out in Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM)
Edmunds’ tag-line noted, “Consumers have been conditioned to think that the summer is a great time to pick up a deal on a new car.” The new figure from the report is that July’s Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate will be 11.8 million, up from 11.1 in June 2010.
The report puts July sales as the highest seen since last August’s Cash for Clunkers “frenzy.” Furthermore, this notes that retail demand for new cars in July has been the strongest in 2010. One caveat here is the calendar and days of sales. July 2010 had 27 selling days versus July 2009, and after taking that into account the comparable sales increase was listed as being 4.4% over July 2009. This is represented below.
Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F), on an adjusted basis, was a gain of 9.1%. An unadjusted figure is 13.2% for year over year growth. The figure on an unadjusted basis for a comparison to June 2010 is still up 5.7%.
For the industry as a whole against Toyota Motors Corp. (NYSE: TM), the report notes that demand is even more than in March when other car-makers followed suit after Toyota launched an aggressive incentive campaign. Toyota is still recovering from its recall debacles as July over July growth was negative at -8.5% on an adjusted basis and -5.0% on an unadjusted basis. Still, things are looking better as the unadjusted figure for July 2010 versus June 2010 is showing growth of a whopping 18.1%.
Ford shares are up 0.7% at $13.00 and Toyota ADRs are also up 0.7% at $70.26.
Full details on individual sales can be found in the release.
JON C. OGG
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