New vehicle market has bottomed, says Wesbank

Wesbank, the vehicle and asset finance house, believes the new vehicle market has bottomed.

But Chris de Kock, the executive head of sales and marketing at Wesbank, stressed that it was difficult to make predictions in this market, adding that the new vehicle sales figures in March and last month “surprised a lot of us”.

Total new vehicle sales last month plunged year on year by 43 percent, following a 30 percent decrease in March.

“The extent of the downturn in the global and local market was underestimated,” he said last week.

Wesbank believed the new vehicle market had bottomed after the release of the results of its vehicle sales confidence indicator for the first quarter.

The indicator for the second quarter, released last week, showed the confidence levels of vehicle dealers had dropped from 4.4 in January to 4.2 on a 10-point scale for the second quarter – its lowest level since the indicator was launched six quarters ago.

De Kock said the fall to 4.2 was indicative of the very depressed and difficult times vehicle dealers were going through.

“An index score of between 4 and 5 is very low in terms of confidence levels and leads us to think it’s the lowest it will get in this cycle,” he said.

Sourced via mirror.co.uk