Ford Will Stop Reporting Monthly Sales Data After Sales Plunge 9%
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 01/03/2019
Capping what has been an abysmal year for the global automobile market and starting off what Morgan Stanley predicts to be another coming awful year for the industry, Ford reported that its sales for December were down 9%. Ford’s fleet sales and car sales both cratered, falling well into the double digits, or -19.5% and -27.8%, respectively.
And it looks as though Tim Cook isn’t the only one not especially excited about giving up on transparency heading into the back end of a decade-long artificial bull market. Taking a page out of General Motors’ book, Ford announced that they were no longer going to report monthly sales data and will be moving to reporting sales data on a quarterly basis instead.
As a reminder, when General Motors changed its reporting of sales, it hilariously stated that reducing its disclosures would “give a more accurate view of its business operations”.
“Thirty days is not enough time to separate real sales trends from short-term fluctuations in a very dynamic, highly competitive market,” Kurt McNeil, GM’s U.S. VP of sales operations, said at the time.
Right.
Along those same delusional lines, Ford’s management called the month the end to “another strong year for Ford and the industry”. So strong, in fact, that they want to report sales only 33% as often as they used to. Here is a more detailed look of how Ford brands fared across the company’s entire portfolio of vehicles:
The Rest…HERE