Winter Thaw Brings Out Car Buyers As GM, Toyota Beat Estimates
Source: Bloomberg
23 minutes ago • By KEITH NAUGHTON and MARK CLOTHIER Bloomberg News
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. • A thaw in the weather began to bring buyers back to showrooms, which allowed General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Nissan and Chrysler to beat analysts' estimates for March sales.
Ford Tuesday forecast a sales pace of about 16.5 million, including medium-duty and heavy trucks, which typically account for at least 200,000 sales annually. Chrysler projected a pace of 16.2 million vehicles on that same basis. Analysts had projected a 15.8 million light-vehicle selling rate, up from 15.3 million a year earlier. GM sales rose 4.1 percent, after analysts predicted a 0.8 percent rise.
The better-than-estimated results come as welcome relief to automakers that endured two months of quiet dealerships as blizzards and frigid temperatures kept tire-kickers homebound. Light-vehicle sales through February fell 1.4 percent, according to researcher Autodata Corp.
"Things are recovering to where we were last summer," Matthew Stover, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities, in Boston, said in a telephone interview. "The weakness we saw in January and February had more to do with weather than with the overall economy."
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/winter-thaw-brings-out-car-buyers-as-gm-toyota-beat/article_22a70c2e-15ed-5046-94ff-1d970d44805c.html
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