By Demian Russian
With Sirius XM Radio’s (NASDAQ: SIRI) subscription business model tied so closely to the OEM channel, it’s important to keep an eye on how U.S. auto sales are tracking. According to Edmunds’ official September auto sales forecast released today, auto sales seem to be holding steady, although stagnant. Playground Radio listeners were offered a peek of Edmunds official report on last night's show from Jessica Caldwell, the Director of Pricing and Industry Analysis at Edmunds, before it was released to the public today.
Despite some noteworthy new car introductions, auto sales are stagnant right now. Automakers seem to have accepted the current sales rate; most seem reluctant to invigorate the market through traditional incentives programs or unload significant levels of inventory as fleet sales.
–Jessica Caldwell, the Director of Pricing and Industry Analysis at Edmunds
Edmunds is estimating auto sales for the month of September to total 936,900 vehicles, which is close to a 28% increase year-over-year. Edmunds notes in their report that September 2009 was a “Cash for Clunkers hangover month.” Although Edmunds forecasts September auto sales to decline close to 6% month-over-month from August, they project the SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate) to track up to 11.47 million for September from 11.44 million in August. Edmunds noted that automaker incentives were down 3.1% month-over-month and 4.7% year-over-year.
One notable positive in Edmunds’ report for Sirius XM was that fleet sales were not overinflated in September, as they were earlier in the year. Fleet sales traditionally carry lower Satellite Radio penetration rates than retail sales. Edmunds forecasted fleet sales to account for only about 19 percent of September’s total sales. Edmunds estimates that the retail share of September sales will translate into a SAAR of 9.4 million.
Edmunds estimates that the combined U.S. market share for
