Sales up at Pendragon
Car sales giant Pendragon said it is “cautiously optimistic” about the outturn for 2010 after it revealed a 27 per cent increase in its new car sales this morning. The Nottingham-based company, which owns the Evans Halshaw and Stratstone brands, said that its used car volume was up by 7.0 per cent over the third quarter of the year.
Pendragon released its interim statement for the three months to 30 September 2010 on the London Stock Exchange this morning.
However, the car registration division did not fare as well. New retail car registrations fell by 23.4 per cent and total new car registrations including fleet fell by 11.0 per cent.
Pendragon said that excluding the additional volume from the government scrappage scheme, retail registrations would have increased by 27.6 per cent in the quarter.
Excluding scrappage, Pendragon’s total retail sales were up 30.1 per cent. Retail sales excluding scrappage were up 1.4 per cent in the Stratstone division and in Evans Halshaw, they were up 43.0 per cent.
In a statement, the company said: “We continue to focus on the aftersales segment of our activities and growing this area of the business through a package of targeted measures.
“We believe that used cars should continue to generate stable margins given expectations of a subdued new car market and that used car volume will improve. Across the business we continue to focus on maintaining our control on costs but without impacting our growth aspirations.”
