General Motors Co.’s vehicle sales rose 21% in the third quarter, showing resilience against rising interest rates and little impact yet from the ongoing United Auto Workers strike, but Stellantis NV, another carmaker impacted by the strike, saw a small sales drop for the quarter.
The GM
GM,
sales increase for the July-September quarter included a 16% jump in retail sales and a 28% rise in sales of electric vehicles, GM said. Incentives and average prices remained “relatively flat,” GM said.
Nearly 443,000 vehicles were in inventory, the best quarter-ending in three years, GM said.
Later Tuesday, Stellantis
STLA,
said its U.S. unit sold 380,563 vehicles in the third quarter, a drop of 1% as compared with the third quarter of 2022. Stellantis highlighted sales of its Chrysler Pacifica hybrid vans and Jeep hybrids and said that it “gained traction” over the summer.
U.S. carmakers’ inventories are at their best in the past couple of years, providing some cushion for the UAW strike, which entered its third week and has expanded to plants and auto-parts distribution centers.
See also: UAW strike: More Ford, GM workers furloughed
Earlier this week, Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
missed already-lowered expectations for its third-quarter sales, and EV startup Rivian Automotive Inc.
RIVN,
beat forecasts for its July-September period.
Ford Motor Co.
F,
also facing the UAW strike, is expected to report September sales in the coming days.
Earlier Tuesday, Toyota Motors Corp.’s
7203,
TM,
North America unit said that its U.S. sales in September rose 14% year-on-year, and third-quarter sales rose 12%.
Last week, J.D. Power forecast U.S. sales of new vehicles to jump more than 13% in September, for a second straight month of double-digit sales. The September figures would take the seasonally adjusted annualized rate for new-vehicle sales to 15.4 million vehicles, up 2 million vehicles from September 2022, J.D. Power said.
GM shares dropped nearly 3% in the day and are down 6% so far this year, which contrasts with an advance of 10% for the S&P 500 index
SPX
in the same period.
