U.S. automakers may have sold vehicles at the fastest pace since December, according to industry reports.
The bump in sales (predicted by Fly) follows Hurricane Harvey, which likely damaged more cars than any storm in history.
GM, Toyota and Ford each said the auto industry likely sold more than 18 million vehicles in September – blowing out analyst estimates of 17.4 million from a Bloomberg News survey.
Via Bloomberg:
General Motors Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. led all major carmakers that have reported results for the month in exceeding analyst estimates. Both said the industry may have sold vehicles at the fastest pace since December.
For all the destruction wrought by Harvey, the storm may have been a shot in the arm for an auto market that’s been shrinking following record sales last year. While analysts had projected the industry would have its best annualized selling pace in six months, those estimates look like they were too conservative. Buyers will keep returning to showrooms in Texas for months to replace waterlogged vehicles, giving a boost to bigger models including the Toyota RAV4 crossover, Ford F-Series pickups and Chevrolet Traverse SUV.
“People headed right to the dealer as soon as the storm cleared,” Michelle Krebs, an analyst at car-shopping website Autotrader, said by phone. “We expect this will go into October and possibly continue in November.”
Shares in automakers surged after the Tuesday announcement – with $GM jumping as much as 3.7 percent – on track for its second consecutive record close. Ford ($F) is up nearly 3 percent on the news.
General Motors is overbought in the iBankCoin Exodus algorithm
The stock has decent stats in the algo – rising an average of 5.31% after 10 days of flagging oversold, 5 out of 5 times.
Not enough to unclog stuffed distribution pipeline.