NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
General Motors Corp. posted a more than 20 percent gain in U.S. vehicle sales in November, while competitors Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler reported a drop in sales due partly to a shorter sales period.
GM's strong results were expected in view of relatively weak November 2002 sales that served as the point of comparison.
Overall sales rose to 359,816 vehicles, while the daily sales rate gained 22.2 percent, helped somewhat by one less sales day in the latest month. The rate for light trucks, which include pickups,sport/utility vehicles and minivans, rose nearly 30 percent, while the rate for cars gained 12.8 percent.
Truck sales were in line with the forecasts of Goldman Sachs auto analyst Gary Lapidus and Burnham Securities analyst David Healy, but the car sales were a bit weaker than Lapidus' forecast and a bit stronger than Healy's.
GM said it will increase its North American production by 10,000 vehicles above earlier estimates for the fourth quarter, but that would still leave it behind year-ago production. It also said first-quarter production will be 7 percent behind a year earlier.
GM said that it believes its market share would come in the mid-to-high 28 percent range, ahead of its overall performance for the year just above 28 percent. Paul Balley, executive director of market and industry analysis at GM, acknowledged that the company is unlikely to grow market share from the 28.4 percent share it reported in 2002, which had been the second straight year of share gain for the company.
"Having a threepeat is a tough challenge. The key is we've been able to hold our own, gain in some key areas such as luxury vehicles and mid-size utilities," he said.
Drop in fleet sales hits Ford
Sales at Ford, the nation's No. 2 automaker, fell 2.4 percent to 255,533 vehicles. Light trucks were up just 1.4 percent despite strong sales of the new F-150 pickup truck, the nation's best-selling vehicle. Car sales fell 9.7 percent. Ford, unlike other U.S. automakers, compares only raw sales totals, not daily sales rate.
The company said sales to retail buyers were basically unchanged during the month. The overall drop was due to a 10 percent decrease in fleet sales business, including fewer sales to car rental companies.
Ford said the sales drop was part of a strategy to improve the profitability mix of its vehicles. Fleet sales generally are made at a lower price than retail sales. Ford said it had cut its fourth-quarter production plans by 20,000, due primarily to an expected drop in purchases of Taurus sedans by rental companies, which buy about 60 percent of the model. Car rental leader Hertz is a Ford unit.
Ford did say that first-quarter production would roughly match the first quarter of 2003.
Burnham Securities' Healy had expected Ford to show a 10 percent gain in light truck sales, easily outweighing the 4 percent decline he expected for cars. Goldman Sachs' Lapidus had forecast last week that Ford would show an overall 3 percent sales increase from last year, with a 7 percent gain for trucks outweighing a 6 percent drop for cars. But Lapidus wrote in a note to clients Monday that he had seen indications that industry-wide sales were weaker than expected during the holiday weekend.
At Chrysler, the North American unit of DaimlerChrysler AG, sales declined slightly to 157,212 from 158,839 a year ago. But since November 2003 had one less sales day than the year-ago month, the daily sales rate was up 3 percent despite the slim decline in overall sales.
Chrysler had a 5 percent gain in its light-truck daily sales rate, slightly better than Healy's and Lapidus' forecasts. Its car sales were off 4 percent, but cars account for only about one-quarter of its sales, and that beat Healy's forecast but missed Lapidus' expectations.
Shares of GM (GM: up $0.18 to $43.31, Research, Estimates) were higher while Ford (F: down $0.20 to $12.92, Research, Estimates) and DaimlerChrysler (DCX: down $0.14 to $38.57, Research, Estimates) were slightly lower following the midday sales reports.
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