General Motors has scrapped its traditional monthly reporting of vehicle sales figures in Canada in favour of quarterly reporting — a move that is expected to impact consumers and data-sharing companies more than auto retailers, according to Dennis DesRosiers, President of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.
“They are only going to quarterly reporting for public consumption,” said DesRosiers, in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “The vehicle companies that share their data continue to share it on a monthly basis — including General Motors. There won’t be any difference in terms of a vehicle company being able to evaluate market dynamics month-to-month.”
DesRosiers said GM is cutting back their quarterly reporting because it’s a hassle for them; it’s a lot of work just to prepare these reports for public consumption, which is why it will mostly impact “the casual follower of the auto industry.”
GM moved to quarterly reporting for the U.S. market in 2018 and there have been no major upheavals as a result, said DesRosiers.
Up until the early 1990s, OEMs would produce sales reports on a 10-day basis, which was first relinquished by the former Chrysler Corporation, according to BNN Bloomberg. Rivals, they said, followed the automaker’s example within the following three years.
So far no other vehicle manufacturer in the U.S. has followed suit, although Ford has announced its intention to move to quarterly reporting, according to a January 2019 report from Wards Auto. The automaker also plans to continue to release monthly sales figures to data providers.
For data-sharing companies, GM’s shift will require some adaptation as they will not be providing them with monthly sales numbers. “We are one of the people that do a lot of data sharing, and we are in the middle of all of this,” said DesRosiers. “And so we have to adapt some practices.”
