Shares of Ford Motor Co. (F) are higher on the session by more than 2%, after the company announced its March sales increased 19 percent year-over-year and 6 percent more than Wall Street was expecting. Ford’s new Fiesta had its best sales month ever with 9,787 examples sold, up 56% versus February. Ford Fusion also set a monthly sales record with 27,566 cars sold, up 21 percent versus a year ago while the F-Series truck line totaled 53,272, up 25 percent on the year.
Ford also said it outsold General Motors Co. (GM) for the first time in more than a year. Ford’s light-vehicle deliveries in the month increased to 212,295, topping GM’s sales of 206,621. GM’s 9.6% sales gain trailed analysts’ consensus for a 20% gain.
[via Bloomberg]“Ford is clearly winning the overall war here,” said Mitchell Stapley, who helps oversee $17.7 billion as chief fixed-income officer at Fifth Third Asset Management in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “GM hasn’t had the organic sales growth without rebates that they need to be able to say they’ve regained momentum from Ford.”GM gained $1.17, or 3.21%, to $32.19 at 3:22 p.m. in NYSE composite trading. Volume has exploded with more than 25 million GM shares already trading hands compared to a daily average volume of 16 million. Ford gained 36 cents, or 2.41%, to $15.27 on 90 million volume vs 89 million average.
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