INDICATA Market Watch: Online B2C sales prices rise for the eleventh consecutive month

Online B2C sales prices rise for the eleventh consecutive month

The Netherlands is one of only three countries in our Market Watch report to see year-to-date sales of online B2C used cars better last year’s results, with February 2022 YTD sales 3.7% above last year’s performance although they still trail the same period in 2020 by 2.7%.

Looking at February in isolation online B2C sales were 23.0% down on the very strong January result but 1.8% above February 2021.

All powertrains saw sales fall month-on-month although hybrids weathered the storm better than the other fuel types. But compared to February 2021 online B2C used diesel car sales fell 25% whilst BEVs increased sales by 37%, hybrids rose by 33% and used petrol car sales increased by 6%.

There was no sign of manufacturers supporting much in the way of tactical registrations with sales of cars less than 1-year-old 6% lower than in the previous month and 13% down on February 2021.

Stock turn may have dropped for all powertrains month-on-month but with sales outperforming last year and constraints on the supply of used cars there is little surprise in seeing stock turn rising year-on-year although a 52% increase in BEV stock turn to 4.1x and a 43% increase for hybrids to 4.3x means all powertrains are selling at similar speeds.

Our price index is based on a consistent pool of vehicles indexed against January 2021 and has been reset for the start of the new year which creates a typical uplift of around 2%-4%, followed normally by a lifecycle driven downward curve in average prices. Despite online B2C used stock levels increasing by 6.6% going into March compared to the previous month they are 16.7% lower than a year earlier. This means prices are continuing to move upwards although February saw a marginal slowdown in the rate of increase.

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Background

On the 24th of March INDICATA published its first White Paper “COVID-19 To what extent will the used car market be affected (and how to survive)?”. This document explored:

Early market trends - Initial impact of the virus and the social distancing measures implemented.

Market scenarios – A range of impacts based on infection rate development and historical market data.

Mitigation – Risk assessment by sector coupled with potential corrective actions.

We committed to keeping the market updated with live data, volume, and price, to keep abreast of the fast-moving environment.

As such we are pleased to announce “Indicata Market Watch”.

How do we produce our data?

Indicata analyses 9m Used Vehicle adverts across Europe every day. To ensure data integrity, our system goes through extensive data cleansing processes.

The Sales (deinstall data) in this report are based on advertisements of recognised automotive retailers of true used vehicles. As such, it does not include data related to private (P2P) advertisements.

Where an advert is removed from the internet, it is classified as a “Sale”.

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