Automobile dealer hoping for 50% of last year’s Q1 earnings in Q1 2021

Automobile dealers are hopeful that 2021 will bring about much better business than last year, with one leading dealer aiming to generate in the first quarter of 2021 at least 50 percent of the revenue recorded during the same period last year.

General Manager of Bahamas Bus and Truck and Vice President of the Bahamas Motor Dealers Association Ben Albury said the last few months of 2020 were sluggish and early numbers show the company will be about 25 to 30 percent down from 2019.

Although the return to commerce in the last few months of 2020 has shown some positive signs for the economy, Albury said the tough lending stance taken by banks has contributed to slow sales.

“The last few months of last year were sluggish. I think the next three months are really going to be a good indicator of where we’re going. I see Atlantis is furloughing employees again and the tourism industry is having a sluggish start, so I think it’s expected that until employment levels can reach somewhere back to where they were before, there are going to be issues especially with businesses like ours that are credit driven and that require people to get in most cases access to finance. I think the banks are still being somewhat cautious in making sure that they dot their i’s and cross their t’s as it comes to financing and loans. But we have seen some good traffic, which is always a good indicator,” he told Guardian Business yesterday.

“If you don’t have traffic, you definitely do not have business. It’s just a matter of translating that into qualified buyers that can obtain access to financing and close deals. But I’m always optimistic; we have a resilient economy. There’s still a lot of construction going on after Dorian and I have seen some of that with construction vehicles, which is always a good thing, that things are steady. But I’m really going to watch the next three months especially and see how the first quarter kicks off. Hopefully from there, things will get better and better as things continue to open up and hopefully return to some sort of normalcy.”

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty in the economy, commercial banks have maintained a conservative lending stance.

Albury was among many merchants that voiced opposition to last year’s frequent and prolonged lockdown of “non-essential” businesses. He said the automobile industry has made it through tough times before and will make it through this rough patch.

“We have, as an industry, had several tough years and it seems that in the last years, things were starting to rebound and the numbers were starting to get back to where they were a few years ago. But it seems like every time things start working in our favor, we get knocked back a little bit. But we’re resilient. Bahamas Bus and Truck has been around for 80 years and we’ve seen a lot of good and bad times,” he said.

Asked about future prospects, Albury said, “It’s hard to visualize and it comes down to so many different moving factors, but if we’re not put under any more restrictions, I can expect to see somewhere around 50 to 60 percent of what I would have seen over the last first quarter. We started off last year very aggressive and doing quite well and as the year went on, the challenges surfaced and things obviously took a dive, as it did in a lot of other industries.

“But some businesses have actually generated business during all of this, so I guess we’ll just have to hold on and see how that is distributed and what happens as far as the restrictions are concerned.

“I haven’t gotten all of our final December numbers yet. We’re still inputting them but as it looks right now, we’re probably going to be about 25 percent, maybe 30 percent down over last year as a whole, but once we get the final numbers in probably within the next two or three days, I’ll have a more accurate percentage.”

The auto industry is one of the biggest contributors to the treasury based on the volume of import duty and value-added tax collected.

With that in mind, Albury said he hopes that despite the ongoing pandemic, the government refrains from damaging the industry any further than it has with the constant lockdowns imposed last year.

“One thing where we definitely saw an improvement is the minute the government got rid of the weekend lockdowns and got rid of the early curfews, we saw almost an immediate increase in business. And then when they put those measures back in place briefly in October, we saw another decline. So, hopefully, the government will have the ability to keep things open more and maybe if our numbers continue to stay manageable, they will consider further opening the economy through allowing an even later curfew or no curfew,” he said.

“That gives people more hours that they can work. And hopefully, we can open up some indoor dining, because I think those things would help. The more hours that people can punch on the clock, the more free flow we can get of money moving through the economy and then, hopefully, we will see some improvement. Our numbers lately have been showing some good signs, so, hopefully, we can capitalize on that.”

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