The Ingolstadt car manufacturer Audi holds despite the Supply bottlenecks for engines for high-yield vehicles
and the difficult market environment, it is sticking to its forecast for the year as a whole. Chief Financial Officer Jürgen Rittersberger (51) said on Friday that he assumed a return of 8 to 10 percent would be achieved. “The effects in the first quarter were largely temporary,” emphasized the manager.
In addition to the problems with the V6 and V8 engines, the Volkswagen-Daughter also creating a strike in Mexico. The Q5 SUV is produced there, which is particularly important for the US market.
However, the problems with the engines put a massive strain on Audi at the start of the year. In the first three months the return was 3.4 percent, after 10.8 percent a year ago. Sales fell by a good 3 billion euros to 13.7 billion euros, and operating profit of 466 million euros was around a quarter of the previous year’s level.
Dispute with supplier Vitesco
In addition, the delivery bottlenecks come at a time when the market as a whole is weakening. Rittersberger referred to the difficult environment, particularly in Europe Germany, which is likely to continue throughout the year. “We see very strong price competition from which we cannot completely escape.” The price pressure is particularly strong for electric cars.
A certain level of relaxation can already be seen in the second quarter, said Rittersberger. “We expect a significant improvement from the third quarter onwards, which will have a very positive impact in the third and fourth quarters.”
Support should also come on the cost side. Rittersberger pointed out that raw material costs were developing favorably. Audi is also trying to get better in sales. “There is still a lot of potential that we can exploit.” Audi launched a performance program in 2022 that will show further effects over the course of the year.