April same-store sales up; service and parts revenue down

Same-store sales were up again in April on the strength of a gain in unit sales.

Overall sales grew 3.2 percent year-over-year, according to the latest report from CDK Global Recreation, which is based on data from users of the company’s Lightspeed software. It was the fourth month in a row of same-store sales growth. Overall same-store sales have been up year-over-year for 14 of the last 15 months and 25 of the last 28 months dating back to January 2014.

On the negative side, though, unit sales was the only category to post year-over-year growth, showing a 3.3 percent increase for the past 12 months. It was also the fourth straight month of unit sales growth and an improvement from February’s 0.4 percent increase.

Service department revenue was down 4.0 percent year-over-year after posting increases of 9.7 percent in March and 13.8 percent in February.

Parts department revenue was down 1.6 percent, following a 5.3 percent increase in March and 10.3 percent in February.