Although Audi sold significantly more cars in the first half of the year, profits fell. Sales climbed by 14.4 percent to 34.2 billion euros, but the bottom line was a profit of 3.3 billion euros, which had fallen by a good quarter, the Ingolstadt-based VW subsidiary announced on Friday. Among other things, strongly negative effects from commodity hedging transactions played a role, and a year ago Audi had also benefited from increased used car prices, as CFO Jürgen Rittersberger (51) explained.
On a half-year basis, sales, which also include the Bentley and Lamborghini brands, increased above all in Europe with 24 percent and in the USA with 30 percent. The important Chinese market, on the other hand, weakened with a plus of only 2 percent, after the previous year had been problematic there. Even VW, the core brand of the Volkswagen Group, falls massively behind in China
. Volkswagen even cut its sales forecast.
The first quarter was weak, in the second Audi achieved stronger growth again at 20 percent – but only compared to the weak previous year’s figures, which were characterized by lockdowns.
“All in all, our first half-year went well,” said Rittersberger. However, he also acknowledged that the offer electric vehicles in China is currently rather small. Audi is planning further models here. You can feel the price war there, but try to stay out of it.
Rittersberger promises “electric fireworks”
The Volkswagen Group was recently dissatisfied with the development of its subsidiary. A month ago, the management therefore replaced the previous Audi boss Markus Duesmann (54) with Gernot Döllner (54), who will take over the helm in Ingolstadt on September 1st. As the new boss wants to revamp Audi, you can read here
.
In principle, with growth of around half in electric cars, Audi sees itself on the right track to achieving an almost double-digit share of its own sales in the current year. At the end of the year, “the electric fireworks” would really start, promised Rittersberger.
Audi largely confirmed its own forecast for the current year. However, the group expects somewhat higher research and development costs.