US Auto Sales in May Fall by 6% YoY: Discrepancy between Light Truck Sales and Passenger Car Sales Widen

Key Points 

• US auto sales declined by 6% YoY to 1.53mil units in May, about in line with expectations.  
• Last month had one week-end (or two days) fewer than May 2015, therefore distorting the YoY growth result.  
• When adjusted for the dsr, sales growth would have been +1.8% YoY. SAAR was 17.45mil, slightly above last month’s SAAR.  
• Passenger car sales fell by as much as 15.6% YoY, while light truck sales continued to rise, up 2.3% YoY.  

Although the US auto market seems to be stagnating (YTD +1.2% YoY), automakers remain positive about their outlook; partly since the model mix continues to improve, partly since transaction prices are still rising (+3.4% YoY, according to Truecar). Consensus estimates for 2016 sales had been moderate (+2% YoY), so recent results should not be seen as disappointing.  
The Japanese as a group continued to outperform, with all Japanese except for Toyota posting better results than the industry’s average.
In this report we have a brief discussion on the performance of the Japanese automakers and we also include a table showing the performance of all makers and a chart of SAAR.