CPO sales up year-over-year for fourth time in five months

Not only were certified pre-owned vehicle sales up 1% year-over-year in October, they snapped a three-month streak of month-over-month declines.

That’s according to a Cox Automotive analysis of Motor Intelligence data, which indicated there were 233,514 CPO sales in October.

That beats September figures by 4%.

And the CPO market has now shown year-over-year gains for two straight months and in four of the last five months.

The 224,536 CPO sales in September were up from 204,946 a year earlier, according to the Cox analysis of Motor Intelligence data.

CPO sales for August dipped from 260,725 to 238,498.

Meantime, CPO sales in July came in at 254,982 units, up from 236,579 in the same month of 2019. In June, there were 261,586 CPO sales, up from 240,844 a year earlier.

And even though year-to-date sales are off 6% through 10 months, they are faring better than the overall used-car market, which is down 8%, Cox said.

The company is projecting 2.6 million certified sales this year, slower than the record 2.8 million CPO sales in 2019, which was the ninth consecutive record year.

However, the expected full-year tally remains in the same ballpark that annual CPO sales have been over the last handful of years.

For instance, both 2017 and 2016 — which were record years — had certified sales in the neighborhood of 2.64 million, according to Autodata Corp. data previously reported by Auto Remarketing. There were 2.55 million in 2015 and 2.34 million sales in 2014, which again were both record years at the time, according to our previous reporting on Autodata info.

And its latest forecast of 2.6 million is stronger than forecasts earlier in the year, when it projected 2.5 million certified sales for the year in August.

And a few months earlier, Cox Automotive was projecting 2.0 million CPO sales in its 2020 Market Insights & Outlook

During Cox Automotive’s Q3 2020 U.S. Auto Sales Forecast Call in late September, manager of economics and industry insights Zo Rahim said of CPO: “So far, the certified pre-owned market has seen the quickest rebound in sales performance, making CPO the strongest performing segment of the auto retail market.

“Consumer demand for these … like-new used vehicles has really improved from the peak of the crisis back in April,” Rahim said.

Looking at the overall used-car market, Cox estimated October showed a 5% drop in sales. It estimated the 13-month rolling seasonally adjusted annual rate at 37.5 million for used cars in October. 

In September, it was 39.0 million, and in October 2019, it was 39.6 million.

Specific to used retail, or those sales that come through a dealership, the used SAAR for October was an estimated 20.4 million. In September, it was 20.7 million and in October 2019 was 20.6 million.

Below are how the overall used SAAR and retail SAAR levels have trended over the last 13 months. Data courtesy of Cox Automotive.