Ford’s March Car Sales Tanked
Ford's March sales dropped 7.2% as passenger car sales tumbled by more than 25%. Even the company's top-selling F-Series pickups couldn't make up the difference.
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[cnxvideo id=”655353″ placement=”ros”]Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) on Monday reported a U.S. sales decrease of 7% year over year in March, to 236,250 Ford and Lincoln vehicles, compared with March 2016 sales of 254,711. Passenger car sales plummeted 25.6% in the month of March.
Truck sales rose 2.5% for the month, and sales of F-Series pickups increased by 10.1%. Retail sales declined 2% in March to 157,740.
Total sales compare to an estimate of 234,000 by analysts Kelley Blue Book (KBB), who also estimated an average transaction price of $38,220, up 3.4% year over year and down 0.8% compared with February’s average selling price. KBB transaction prices do not include applied consumer incentives.
The company said its overall average transaction prices rose $1,800 year over year.
Sales of the Ford F-Series pickups rose 10.1% year over year in March to 81,330 units. In February Ford sold 65,956 F-Series trucks following a January sales total of 57,995.
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Truck sales comprised about 45% of all Ford-brand sales in March, and the F-Series pickups accounted for about 36% of total Ford-brand March sales.
Sales of the company’s sport utility vehicles (SUVs) posted a year-over-year decrease of 3.2% in March, but the 25.6% decline in car sales is what caused the big total drop.
Ford Fiesta sales rose 20.6% year over year, but no other car posted a gain. Fusion sales were down 36.8% and Mustang sales fell 27.4% year over year.
Sales of the Lincoln brand fell 1.4% year over year in March as sales of Lincoln cars rose 6.2% on sales of the all-new Lincoln Continental. Car sales totaled 3,464 units in the month and utility vehicle sales totaled 6,090 units. SUV sales fell 5.3% year over year in March.
Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), which shipped 25,000 units in the first three months of 2017, now has a larger market cap than Ford.
Ford’s stock traded down about 2.6% about an hour after Monday’s opening bell, at $11.34 in a 52-week range of $11.07 to $14.22, and the 12-month consensus price target is $13.18.
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Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.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.
