Sales Dive 18% for GM in May
GM's best-selling vehicle in the month was the Chevy Silverado pickup, which saw a year-over-year sales decrease of more than 12%.
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General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) posted total May U.S. sales of 240,450 vehicles, a decrease of 18% compared with May 2015. Retail deliveries fell 13.4%, fleet deliveries slipped 4.1 points and commercial sales rose 1% in May.
GM’s new vehicle sales for May were forecast at 254,643 by analysts at Edmunds.com. Kelley Blue Book (KBB) had estimated sales of 258,000 at an average transaction price of $38,654, up about 0.1% month over month and up about 5.5% year over year. GM reported that its average May transaction prices ticked up to $35,722 from April’s average of $35,400. KBB does not include applied consumer incentives to its calculation. GM reported that May incentive spending equaled 9.8% of its average transaction price, compared with an industry average of 10.6%.
The best-selling vehicle in the month was the Chevy Silverado pickup, which saw a year-over-year sales decrease of 12.7% to 45,035 units. Sales of the GMC Sierra pickups fell 7% in May to 17,642 units while the Colorado midsize pickup posted a sales increase of 3.5% to 9,196 units.
Cadillac retail sales fell 10.9%, following a 28.9% decline in April. Cadillac sales totaled 12,099 units in May.
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Total Chevrolet deliveries in May fell 18.6% year over year to 169,331 units and retail sales tumbled 14.1% to 126,024 units.
The company’s Buick brand saw a year-over-year total sales decrease of 22.1% in May and a decrease of 10.7% in retail sales.
For the auto industry as a whole, GM’s forecast for the seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of sales is 17.0 million for May, down from its April estimate of 17.6 million.
GM’s stock traded down about 3.9% Wednesday morning, at $30.06 in a 52-week range of $24.62 to $36.88.
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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.
