Motor Trader The award-winning and longest running UK magazine for car retailing professionals. Your first stop for News, Jobs and Reports for the motor industry.
Aftersales was the most profitable area for Pendragon in the third quarter of 2010.
Like-for-like Q3 aftersales margin rose by 0.7 per cent compared to Q3 2009 while like-for-like used car sales rose 7 per cent with stable margins for the period compared to the first half.
Excluding scrappage, like-for-like new car retail sales were up 30.1 per cent, outperforming the UK overall market, which saw a 27.6 per cent increase.
Retail sales for the UK’s largest dealer group, excluding scrappage, were up 1.4 per cent at its luxury arm Stratstone and 43 per cent at volume division Evans Halshaw.
Looking to the future, Pendragon said it aimed to improve profitability and reduce debt.
“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.”