Financial thoughts

U.S. auto sales edged higher in November, led by an outsized gain for Hyundai Motor Co and mixed results for rivals in a trend automakers said pointed to a grudging recovery in the U.S. economy.

Hyundai posted a 46 percent gain in sales for November and said it was on track to take a 4 percent share of the U.S. auto market this year, up by a third at a time when the rest of the industry has been reeling. The Korean carmaker benefited from a recent marketing push and lineup of fuel-efficient cars.

Toyota Motor Corp, the world’s largest automaker and the best-selling brand in the U.S. market, saw a rise of nearly 3 percent in November sales.

Nissan Motor Co Ltd, the No. 6 automaker in the United States, reported a nearly 21 percent increase in sales. Honda Motor Co Ltd sales were off nearly 3 percent.

As a group, U.S. automakers lost share during the month, with Ford Motor Co distancing itself again from domestic rivals General Motors Co and Chrysler.

Ford posted flat sales while Chrysler, now under management control of Italy’s Fiat SpA, said sales fell 25 percent from the same month a year earlier. GM’s sales fell 2 percent.

Ford, the only U.S. automaker to have avoided a taxpayer-funded restructuring in bankruptcy, set a sharply higher target for North American production in the first quarter. It expects production to rise 58 percent from the previous year when it had cut back output as the auto market slid toward its weakest level since the early 1980s.

“It appears that the economy and the auto sales have stabilized and that the worst is behind us,” Ford U.S. sales chief Ken Czubay told a conference call.

Separately, GM’s CEO, Fritz Henderson, will leave the automaker, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The planned departure comes after a meeting of GM’s 13-member board of directors in Detroit.

SALES QUAGMIRE

U.S. auto sales results were pushed lower by a quirk in the calendar. November had only 23 selling days for dealerships — two fewer than the same month a year earlier.

On the adjusted and annualized basis tracked by industry planners and analysts, the U.S. auto market came just short of a sales rate of 11 million units in November. That is up from 10.4 million a year ago and in line with analyst estimates.

Results confirmed the industry is on the mend after a deep four-year downturn, analysts said, but they cautioned that sales are coming back from historically low levels. Sluggish consumer confidence and rising unemployment could make any recovery slow and uneven.

“You are comparing terrible numbers to terrible numbers, so it doesn’t look that bad,” said Dennis Virag, an analyst with Automotive Consulting Group.

“There still is a very dismal state within the auto industry and it will probably be another year or so until we start pulling out of the quagmire we are in,” Virag said. 

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