Volkswagen looks a little more relaxed after a year with many potholes. After the decline in deliveries in the past year, the group expects an increase of almost 15 percent to around 9.5 million vehicles in 2023. The reason is the order backlog of 1.8 million vehicles, which has accumulated due to a lack of semiconductors and persistent delivery bottlenecks.
Sales should increase in a range between 10 and 15 percent, the operating return should land between 7.5 and 8.5 percent, as Volkswagen announced on Friday. This means that the lower end of the range is half a percentage point higher than was forecast for the previous year. Investors were infected by the optimism: with a price increase of more than 9 percent recently, the VW shares
to the top of the winners in the Dax.
Dividend increases, 15.8 billion euros net profit
With the forecast, Europe’s largest car manufacturer is aiming for group sales of between 307 and 331 billion euros. Last year, sales climbed by almost 12 percent to around 280 billion euros. The Wolfsburg-based company increased the operating result by 15 percent to a good 22 billion euros. The bottom line is that profits increased by around 3 percent to 15.8 billion euros. From this, the shareholders are to receive a dividend increased by EUR 1.20 each. Instead of EUR 7.50 per ordinary and EUR 7.56 per preferred share as in the previous year, EUR 8.70 and EUR 8.76 respectively should flow to the shareholders, including the holding company as the largest Porsche SE of the Porsche and Piech families, the state of Lower Saxony and the Emirate of Qatar.
“Today’s results are further proof of the solid financial basis on which we are consistently implementing our strategy,” explained CFO Arno Antlitz (52).
Deliveries dropped, more stockpiled
According to the information, the group delivered 7 percent fewer cars than in 2021 – a total of 8.26 million. However, this decline was offset “by positive product mix effects and price positioning”. VW highlighted that sales of e-cars increased by 26 percent compared to the previous year. A total of around 572,000 electric cars were delivered. The Volkswagen Group assumes that it will sell a total of around 9.5 million vehicles in 2023.
Volkswagen published the first key data from its balance sheet in early February. Accordingly, the inflow of cash last year almost halved from 8.6 to five billion euros because many cars had to be produced in stock due to a lack of semiconductors. The funds tied up were significantly higher than expected. For this year, the people of Lower Saxony are assuming that the trend will be reversed, as stocks are decreasing and production is running smoothly again. Because of the uncertain economy, however, customers are now staying away, which poses new problems for the group.
The first production plant for electric SUVs is built in Columbia
CEO Oliver Blume (54) continues to restructure the group. Ironically, he plans on the failure market of North America according to information from manager magazin, two major investments at the same time
: new plants not only for the production of pickups and SUVs, but also for battery cells.
As Volkswagen announced on Friday, the first production plant for the planned all-electric SUV and pick-up will be built in Columbia, South Carolina. According to the information, the investments amount to two billion US dollars (1.88 billion euros). 4000 jobs are to be created. At full capacity, more than 200,000 vehicles of the VW sub-brand Scout could be produced in the plant, it said.