New vehicle registrations to show slower growth for rest of year, says Glass's
So says Andrew Jackson, head of analytics at Glass’s, who believes the market will see growth of less than 5% for the remainder of the year, following an increase of 7.7% in May registrations to 194,032 units.
Jackson said: ‘Last month indeed represented a marginal slow-down in registrations versus April, primarily due to more restrained fleet-sector growth. Looking at May’s registration figures in detail, Business registrations once again held the top spot for growth with 26.8%. Year-on-year this amounted to an additional 1,600 units to total 7,619 registrations for the month and 48,662 units for 2014, giving further indication of a strengthening economy and increasing ability and willingness of businesses to refresh or enlarge their fleet.’
Fleet registrations in fact grew by 6% YoY to 95,702 units whilst Private registrations delivered an 8% YoY growth which equated to 90,711. When looking at registrations by fuel-type, diesel- and petrol-fuelled registrations grew at 8.7% and 5.2% to total 91,577 and 86,535 respectively. Alternative Fuelled Vehicles (AFVs) recorded an enormous jump in registrations of 72.3%. This gives a monthly total of 3,444, 1,445 units more than April 2013, and a significant increase of 6,881 units (56%) year-to-date.
Looking at the most popular models, Jackson continued: ‘Ford, Vauxhall and Volkswagen once again come out on top. Fiesta continues to be the nation’s favourite model overall with 9,450 recorded registrations, though this only represented a 1% growth versus May 2013.’
In at number two with 36% YoY growth in registrations was Volkswagen’s Golf. Vauxhall’s Corsa took third place with 6,536 registrations, though this still translates as a YoY loss of -1%, making it the fifth straight month of registration declines for the Fiesta rival. Ford’s Focus came in at fourth with 5,824 registrations, though more significantly, this was year-on-year representative of a -23% decline and begs the question of whether potential customers are now refraining from purchasing Ford’s C-segment competitor until the face-lifted version is launched?
Jackson concluded: ‘It’s clear that the market is booming, with business and private registrations growing at a rate we haven’t seen in a while, however registrations surpassing 2.4 million by a significant margin would be very surprising, hence I would predict an average monthly growth rate of less than 5% for the remainder of the year.’