U.S. sales of Ford Motor’s (NYSE:F) new vehicles last month declined by 33.1% from a year earlier due to an ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips that’s wreaking havoc on the automotive industry, the company said Thursday.
The Detroit automaker’s sales capped off a dismal month of U.S. auto sales in August, which plummeted to an adjusted selling rate of 13.09 million vehicles. That’s the worst pace since June 2020 and down from this year’s peak of 18.5 million in April, according to auto data firm Motor Intelligence.
Analysts expected the August selling pace to be between 13.1 million and 14.4 million vehicles, with J.D. Power and LMC Automotive forecasting overall sales to decline by 13.7% compared with August 2020.
The sales pace for any given month measures how many cars the industry would sell for the year if it sold the same amount every month. It’s a main barometer of the industry’s health and demand.
August is historically one of the higher auto sales months of the year, but the chip shortage has caused vehicle inventory levels to plummet to record lows and pricing of new cars and trucks to skyrocket.
Sales of nearly every vehicle in Ford’s lineup were down last month compared with last year, with incremental sales gains from some new vehicles such as its Bronco SUVs. Most notably, Ford’s bestselling F-Series pickups declined by 22.5%.
F reversed two cents to $12.99.
