I don’t want to argue. You can lose sales and still make money you are just making less money or losing money even. And unsold inventory does impact the company no question. Candidly, your having the wrong impression here is another example of financial reporters not looking at company financials. Sales can be up a great deal but if per unit profit sucks and the company is coming off low sales, that may sound better but be irrelevant. Similarly sales can be down a lot but if per unit sales are profitable and they are coming off record highs, that may not be as bad as it sounds- even your headline acknowledges that profits are down but that is not a loss. Directional numbers without any baseline or centering data can be misleading. We will know more when the 2024 year end financials are published.
Listen my point isn’t to argue everything is hunky dory at Chrysler in the U.S. Dealers don’t publicly complain about the company if it is. But some here and in the press are talking about viability and that is unfounded based on the financials. (The bulk of the news including the unsold inventory, is really that Stellantis does not want to rely on incentives to push volume. The plan is for premium pricing based on desirability of the product. Tavares cut back on incentives tremendously and in a higher interest rate environment and slower economy, the dealers are getting stuck with high end vehicles that they cannot move at 9 percent rates. They want incentives from Stellantis to subsidize the sales and reduce the inventory and he has been unwilling to provide them because the company wants to retain earnings to finance the transition to EVs - this is the dispute, not that the company is going to fail.). As to where I get the numbers, they are from the companies respective SEC filings (eg 10-K for the U.S. issuers and 20-F for the foreign issuers, as excerpted by the WSJ via a service it provides for any U.S. listed security.) The focus on cash is to make it clear that even if any of these companiessuffer stupendous losses (unlikely) the cash position of the company makes it unlikely any of them could go bust anytime soon. Compare this to during the GFC where for example Ford’s liquidity consisted almost entirely of cash it borrowed (wisely - it understood it needed cash to survive the closure of the economy).
The only relevance of any of this for the consumer is that if you want a Stellantis branded vehicle, you can get a really good deal. We had a Grand Wagoneer L for a two week family road trip to to the beach with the dogs, and it was a terrificvehicle. It had the HO Hurricane 6, had a 600 mile plus cruising range, could do 90 with ease if I needed to pass, and everyone was super comfortable. Drove it 2k miles. The new motor is fabulous and I am a hemi guy. People won’t complain about losing the hemi after they drive either version of the six. It is on par with the BMW B58 in my opinion if not better, and I say that as a fan of BMW engines. Long way of saying my lack of concern about viability is because as a car guy, I can say the product is excellent and as someone who can read a financial statement, the overall position of the company is fine, and they have time to address the current issues.
But again I will leave it there as some folks just like to argue. Have a good day.
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Prior to the ZF 8HP, they were using the Mercedes NAG-1. How far back are we going here? They've been using the ZF 8HP for the better part of a decade now though. 
