Dealer Digital Business Intelligence Dashboard

Top Headlines We Are Reading At Foundation

• March 2024 New Vehicle Sales Estimates from JD Power

  • March sales are HOT (expected with sales seasonality aligned with tax season and weather warming up)
    • Total new-vehicle sales for March 2024, including retail and non-retail transactions, are projected to reach 1,525,700 units, a 12.1% increase from March 2023 and 22% MoM higher than Feb. 2024’s 1,246,963 sales
    • Hot March has made Q1 New-vehicle sales for the first quarter are projected to increase 4.5% from Q1 2023 when adjusted for selling days. There will still be winners and losers though and we will find that out when official numbers come out in early April
  • Inventory is available to fuel sales
    • Inventory levels are expected to finish around 1.7 million units, a 4.2% increase from February 2024 and a 39.3% increase from March 2023
    • While sales were up, dealers will be looking over their shoulders as inventory stacks up especially certain models
  • Transaction Price’s UP , Vehicle Incentives UP, but Dealer Profit DOWN
    • Transaction prices are trending towards $44,186—down $1,648 or 3.6%—from March 2023
    • The average incentive spend per vehicle has grown 66.6% from March 2023 and is currently on track to reach $2,800. Expressed as a percentage of MSRP, incentive spending is currently at 5.8%, an increase of 2.2 percentage points from a year ago.
    • Total retailer profit per unit—which includes vehicles gross plus finance and insurance income—is expected to be $2,487, down 31.9% from March 2023

• Experian State of the Automotive Finance Market Report Released March 2024

  • Vehicle Leasing rebounding back to pre-covid levels with 22.5% of new vehicles were leased compared to 17.2% YoY.
  • Captive finance through OEMs has #1 share from auto purchasers at 32% for total market, and 61% for new purchasers
  • EVs are 8.5% of sales with 30% of EVs being leased, which is a higher rate than ICE vehicles. Tesla share of new sales while down still commands 50% of total EV sales.
  • Average loan amount per consumer continues to grow at $738 per month vs. $720 YoY. This aligns with interest rates that are at 7.2%, up from 6.1% in the previous year.

• Q1 2024 Release- Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Study

  • Foundation’s Quick hit Takeaways:
    • Slide 5 – Shoppers continue to visit 2 dealerships on average
    • Slide 6 – Importance of Dealership websites rebounds since COVID with the highest mark ever of 63% of auto shoppers saying they visited a dealership website, #2 behind third-parties (careful of this data point as this is a third-party website owned study).
    • Slide 11-14 – Overall improvement of for trends of dealership experience and satisfaction.
    • Slide 18 – Auto shoppers spend nearly 7 hours shopping online — more than  2x than they do at purchasing dealership.