RE: A balanced assesment......2 May 2025 07:57
Now this sounds impressive, and I do actually buy it despite AML providing zero data to back it up. The reason I do buy Hallmark’s claim is that it does fit with AML’s “bulimic” annual sales cadence. Every year AML “binges” in Q4 and massively loads dealers, then it spends Q1 & Q2 of the following year “purging” all the excess inventory. It’s a massively inefficient and expensive approach. Over the last several years, roughly 35-40% of AML’s wholesales are in Q4 which doesn’t even remotely reflect demand. Looking at Ferrari, where supply equals demand, the quarters are almost completely evenly balanced throughout the year and Q4 normally accounts for 24% of the annual total. Going back to Hallmark’s Q1 retails at 50% ahead of wholesales claim implies that Aston Martin retailed 1,425 vehicles in Q1 2025. On a straight line basis, this projects to annual retail sales of 5,700. The last two years for which we have actual retail numbers for AML are 2023 & 2022. In 2024 AML removed retail sales as an executive bonus KPI target as all it was doing was highlighting the growing gap between wholesales and retails. In 2023, AML retailed 5,918 cars and in 2022, it was 5,970 vehicles. Hence it would appear that despite the impressive “50%” claim, AML will struggle to get near 6,000 retails sales again this year. Back in 2023, at the Capital Market Days presentation, Lafferty presented a slide projecting 10k wholesales in 2024/2025. That, more than another number, really highlights that things haven’t gone as planned.
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