July Sales Up Amid DMS Recovery
J.D. Power expects dealer profit to be down this month 33% year-over-year to $2,298 per unit.
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Two July new-vehicle sales forecast show a return to more normal patterns after the disruption caused by the shutdown of CDK Global dealer software systems.
In fact, J.D. Power expects the seasonally adjusted annualized rate to hit a three-year-plus high of 16.7 million units, taking both retail and nonretail into account. Both it and Cox put July deliveries at 1.3 million. Both this July and last had the same number of selling days.
Though Cox Automotive projects a more conservative 16 million SAAR, that’s a healthy bump from the low 15.3 million in June, when most of the CDK outage occurred. Both Cox and J.D. Power said the July numbers include at least some of the June sales not reported due to the systems shutdown.
“How much is unknown, but tens of thousands of vehicles may have been affected,” said Cox Senior Economist Charlie Chesbrough. “Fleet sales are also unknown but will be an important factor in July’s result … recent trends suggest less activity from this channel.”
J.D. Power said its higher forecasted sales figure would be even higher if not for market factors affecting sales: smaller discount increases due to a seasonal refocus on prior model year discounts; reduced leasing; and decreased inventory resulting from the annual model-year transition, though it forecasts inventory to still be up 33% year-over-year.
Growing inventory, though it feeds sales, also eats into dealer profit, which J.D. Power expects to consequently be down 33% year-over-year to $2,298 per unit, the exact inverse of the inventory reversal. It said just about 15% of new vehicles are selling above manufacturer’s suggested retail price this month.