The company reported a profit of $29.98 million, or 33 cents per share for the three months ending Sept. 30 compared with $27.4 million or 30 cents for the same period a year ago. The Bloomfield Hills-based retailer was expected to earn 30 cents per share according to the average of nine analyst estimates tracked by Thomson One Analytics.

Wall Street, however, was not impressed. The price of Penske's stock fell 42 cents, or 3.1%, to $13.25 per share on Friday.

Standard & Poor's equity analyst Efraim Levy cut his rating on the company from buy to hold and Goldman Sachs analyst Patrick Archambault expressed concern about weaker than expected revenue from new-car sales.

Penske's total revenue rose 6.5% for the quarter to $2.76 billion from $2.59 billion for the same period a year ago.

"The new-vehicle retail environment was challenging during the third quarter; however our performance at our premium/luxury franchises and our focus on increasing used vehicle sales drove our same-store revenue growth," company Chairman Roger Penske said in a statement.  Detroit News