By Demian Russian
With SIrius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin pre-announcing that the company has beat their 2011 year-end net subscriber guidance, adding ~550,000 net new subscribers in the fourth quarter and ~1,700,000 net new subscribers in 2011, investors are now focused on how 2012 is shaping up so far. While Sirius XM is making great new strides in penetrating the used auto market with free promotional trial programs, North American new vehicle sales remains the largest driver fueling Sirius XM’s subscriber growth trajectory.
Premier auto industry tracker TrueCar released their official January 2012 auto sales forecast today and is seeing continuing strength in the U.S. auto sector, noting that January retail sales will be up for the sixth straight month of year-over-year growth.
The underlying consumer demand for new vehicles continues to improve at a steady pace. For the first time in several years, we are starting the year off with a warm and fuzzy feeling of the good-old-days where the industry and the consumers are once again focused on the excitement of the new cars –and not which car company is going to survive. The positive momentum from the end of 2011 and a reasonable January 2012 sales rate will likely take industry sales very close to 14 million units this year.
– Jesse Toprak, Vice President, Market Intelligence, TrueCar.com
According to TrueCar’s January 2012 official forecast, new light vehicle sales in the U.S. for the month of January will total 874, 481 units, up 6.7% year-over-year and down 29.6% month-over-month, which translates into a SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate) of 13.6 million, up from 12.7 million in January 2011 and flat month-over-month. Read More
The Fed proposed Thursday that auto makers produce connected car radios that require the car is in park before drivers may look up an address on a navigation system, browse the Internet or dial a phone number.
