Ford Sales Drop More Than Projected a Year After Harvey Rebound

Oct 02 2018, 1:18 PMOct 02 2018, 1:42 PMOctober 02 2018, 1:18 PMOctober 02 2018, 1:42 PM

(Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co.’s light vehicle sales dropped 11 percent in September, a sharper plunge than analysts had estimated, as deliveries of sport utility vehicles and F-Series pickups declined.

Ford’s sales fell more than the 9.1 percent drop that analysts had projected, even though the second-largest U.S. automaker reported a higher share of sales to commercial and government fleet customers and little change to daily-rental sales. Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. also reported larger-than-anticipated declines.

Ford blamed its sales decline on a pair of hurricanes: last year, the recovery from Hurricane Harvey inflated sales, creating a tough comparison with this year, and last month, Hurricane Florence cost the company business.

“September presented a tough scenario,” the automaker said in a statement.

The F-Series pickup line ended a 16-month streak of sales gains, as the trucks experienced an 8.8 percent decline in deliveries. Ford’s aging SUV lineup also sagged 2.7 percent, with the Escape, the automaker’s second-best selling vehicle, plunging 20 percent. And the car collapse continues for Ford, with sales of traditional sedans off by 26 percent.

Most major automakers are expected to post declines from a year earlier, when many people in Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city, boosted sales by replacing vehicles ruined by Hurricane Harvey.

Sales at General Motors Co. probably slipped 14 percent and Nissan Motor Co.’s by 20 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of nine analysts. Industrywide deliveries probably ran at an annualized pace, adjusted for seasonal trends, of 17 million in September, down more than 1 million from a year ago.

Earlier today, Tesla Inc. said it delivered 83,500 vehicles in the third quarter, doubling its total in the prior three months. Of those deliveries, 55,840 were Model 3 sedans, in the range of what Tesla forecast as it finally started to mass-manufacture the sedan.