Delivery problems for some Audiengines and have a worse luxury car business Volkswagen suffered a slump in profits at the beginning of the year. At 4.6 billion euros, operating profit in the first quarter was a fifth below the previous year’s level, Volkswagen announced on Tuesday. The car manufacturer justified this with lower sales volume, an unfavorable country, brand and model mix and higher fixed costs.
The results reflected the expected slow start to the year, said CFO Arno Antlitz (54). At the same time, the company is confident that it will achieve its goals for the current year. “A strong March, the solid order situation and the improving order intake in recent months are encouraging and should already have a positive impact in the second quarter,” emphasized Antlitz.
Revenues shrank by one percent to 75.5 billion euros from January to March, and the operating profit margin fell accordingly by 1.4 percentage points to 6.1 percent. It was therefore well below the target for the current year of seven to 7.5 percent. According to the information, an important reason for the decline is delivery bottlenecks at Audi: Revenues fell significantly here because V6 and V8 engines were temporarily not sufficiently available. Accordingly, the return on sales for the entire Progressive brand group, which, in addition to Audi, also includes the super sports car manufacturer Lamborghini, the luxury car manufacturer Bentley and the motorcycle subsidiary Ducati, collapsed to 3.4 percent.
Also at Porsche Business wasn’t running as smoothly as usual. High upfront costs for new models and weak sales reduced the sports car manufacturer’s profits by almost a third, and the return fell by 4 percentage points. However, things looked better in the Core volume group, which includes the core brand Volkswagen as well as Skoda, Seat/Cupra and the commercial vehicle division with the VW bus. Here the return increased to 6.4 percent.
CEO Oliver Blume (55) has prescribed a billion-dollar savings program for the Wolfsburg-based car manufacturer
. For the core Volkswagen brand alone, costs are expected to fall by ten billion euros by 2026, while the return is expected to rise to 6.5 percent. The group has even set a target of 8 percent for the entire brand group. The programs should begin to have an impact over the course of 2024, Antlitz said.