London (Reuters) - Britain's fourth largest car dealer Lookers forecast better than expected 2014 results on Wednesday after seeing strong new car sales, particularly in the busy month of September when the licence plate changes.
The London-listed firm, which sells nearly 120,000 new and used vehicles in Britain every year, said retail new car sales rose 11.7 percent in the last nine months and used car volumes increased by 5.4 percent on a strong performance in 2013.
Lookers, which also sells used cars, has benefited from a recovery in the new vehicle market, with British new car sales hitting a 10-year high in September, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
Lookers said its full-year results would be "slightly ahead of current market expectations, which will represent a significant increase over the result for the previous financial year."
The car dealer has grown profits for five successive years, outperforming the country's wider car sales market which showed steep falls in 2008 and 2009.
Analysts at Liberum said consensus forecasts were likely to nudge up after the update, which showed Lookers continued to grow ahead of a strong British car market.
They upgraded their own pre-tax profit forecast slightly from 60 million pounds to 61 million pounds.
(Reporting By Anjuli Davies, Editing by Paul Sandle)