Ford Motor released its last month’s sales on Friday showing a drastic increase from last year. However, the sales numbers were off by 4% from the prior month. In August the automaker sold 158,088 new vehicles in the US, which is a 27% increase from last year’s August sales. The production and sales were significantly impacted by semiconductor chips shorted and were down by 3.6% compared to July. It includes an 8% decline in the F-series pickup trucks.
Those sales were in line with analyst expectations, though. The company said its Ford brand was America’s best-selling brand for a second consecutive month. Sales of Ford’s profitable F-Series pickups were up 1.7% for the month of August 2021 but off 10.7% for the first eight months of the year compared with the same period last year. The company has sold 6,842 models of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup as of Aug. 31, including 2,373 vehicles last month.
“F-Series was America’s best-selling truck, best-selling hybrid truck, and best-selling electric truck with F-150 Lightning in August. Ford’s overall electric vehicle portfolio expanded four-fold in July, while conquesting competitors at a rate over 60%,” Andrew Frick, Ford’s vice president of sales, distribution, and trucks, said in a release. Ford’s 2022 electric vehicle sales totaled more than 36,500 units through August. That included sales of about 5,900 vehicles in August, which was 23% lower than the prior month but up more than 300% from a year ago.
Prediction
Furthermore, J.D. Power and LMC Automotive estimate total U.S. new vehicle sales last month topped 980,000 units, which would be 2.6% lower than August 2021 – the first month the auto industry’s vehicle inventories were significantly impacted by an ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips. RBC Capital Markets said the seasonally adjusted annualized rate, or SAAR, for new vehicles, was 13.4 million, slightly higher than its 13.2 million forecasts and in line with July’s 13.5 million. The SAAR is a closely watched metric by analysts and investors.
Year-to-date sales of all Ford’s vehicles, including its luxury Lincoln brand, totaled more than 1.2 million units through August, a 0.2% decrease from a year ago. At the end of last month, the automaker’s U.S. vehicle inventory, including dealer stock and in-transit vehicles, was about 259,000 units, up from 254,000 in July. Despite the decrease in sales being evident, the numbers show a significant growth, which itself is a notable factor. In the present year, due to supply chain constraints, it is largely becoming unpredictable when the changes could happen. There are times when automakers had to stop/halt production or hold the sales/deliveries of the vehicles because of a missing part/ other supply chain constraints.
