2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 15:44
The Volkswagen Group has lowered its sales forecast after the second quarter. Due to inconsistent markets, the targets were set at the 2014 level.
Europe's largest car maker Volkswagenhas cashed its annual forecast for vehicle deliveries. After a slight decrease of 0.5 percent in the first six months, the Group only believes that deliveries at the 2014 level will be achieved by the end of the year. Before taxes, the Volkswagen Group achieved an almost stable result of 7.7 billion euros in the financial result, compared to 7.8 billion in the previous year, despite the charges from the fair value measurement. The company announced on Wednesday that profit after tax was € 5.7 billion, as in the previous year. “The challenges lie in the difficult market environment, intense competition, volatile interest and exchange rate developments and fluctuating raw material prices. We are consistently implementing our efficiency program and are continuing to roll out the modular construction kits. We expect clearly positive effects from this ",said CFO Hans Dieter Pötsch.
VW worries about China, Russia, the USA and Brazil
After a strong first quarter with a 1.8 percent increase in sales, the outlook at the end of April was even more confident and Volkswagen reaffirmed its goal of increasing deliveries “moderately” in the current year. But then, above all, the largest market, China, pulled the sales balance into the red and ended a five and a half year long history of growth.
VW boss Martin Winterkorn nevertheless drew a positive balance for the first six months. "The results in the first half of the year show that Volkswagen is very well positioned and has a convincing product range even in an increasingly tough market environment." However, the manager is also concerned about the individual markets given the uncertainties in the markets in China, Brazil and Russia. " And in the USA, too, VW has stopped the rapid downward trend of the last few months, but will only really score again when the new models specially developed for the states come onto the market.
Audi and Porsche set top figures
The operating results of the individual group brands were also very inconsistent. The core brand increased its operating profit by 0.4 billion euros to 1.4 billion euros due to positive exchange rate effects from sales and cost optimization and the efficiency program, and the operating margin also rose from 2.1 to 2.7 percent.
Once again, Audi and Porsche set the best results in terms of results. The Ingolstadt-based company was able to increase its operating profit from 2.7 to 2.9 billion euros, and the operating margin fell by 0.2 to 9.8 percent. And at Porsche, too, the operating profit rose from 1.4 to 1.7 billion euros, while the margin fell from 17.1 to 15.7 percent.
Seat in black
In contrast, Skoda and Seat continued their successful course. The Czech VW subsidiary was able to increase earnings by 100 million euros to 522 million euros, primarily due to mix effects and exchange rate improvements as well as lower material costs. The operating margin was 8.1 percent after 7.1 percent in the previous year. Seat left the red zone and after a minus of 37 million euros it now came to 52 million euros.
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is currently renewing its product range with the new Caddy and the T6. As a result, the decline in the operating result from 280 to 268 million euros is just as unsurprising as the fall in the operating margin from 5.9 to 5.1 percent. The decline in vehicle sales was also noticeable at Bentley, causing earnings to drop significantly from 95 to 54 million euros.
Different developments at Scania and MAN
Scania and MAN developed differently. While Scania increased its operating profit from 476 million to 503 million euros and raised the operating return by 0.3 percent to 9.7, MAN recorded a loss of over 37 million euros at 185 million euros.
Despite the inconsistent developments, Winterkorn sees the group as well equipped for the future: “We have an extensive range of attractive, environmentally friendly, technologically leading and high quality vehicles. The brands of the Volkswagen Group will continue the product offensive in 2015, modernize their range of products and add new models. "(AG / TF / dpa)
