FYI: We only have three auto manufacturers reported as-of 9:15 AM EST, but as-of that time of writing Honda got March US Auto Sales off to a poor start. To be specific, the 70 bps YoY drop was made much worse because March 2017 has a more favorable combined calendar and day trade adjustment than a year ago. Nissan and Mazda both did much better, each seeing sales rise by 3-5% YoY NSA. With 20% of the auto industry reported (by volume), sales are tracking a miss but things look much less grim than they did right after Honda announced its sales just after 7:00 AM. We will continue to update our tracker as new results come in throughout the day.
Update 9:24 AM EST: Ford missed, delivering -7.2% YoY sales growth versus -5.9% expected by analysts; both are NSA, with no adjustment for the number of sales days in the month. That said, the consequences were brutal for the overall industry sales pace which by our calculation is tracking 16.403mm seasonally adjusted annual rate in March with about 1/3rd of the industry reported.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bespokepremium.com/think-big-blog/auto-sales-off-to-a-poor-start-in-march-reporting/
