The sports car manufacturer Porsche wants to defend itself against the crisis with an expensive program of measures. This year, the Stuttgarters will take a lot of money to develop new cars with combustion engine or plug-in hybrid drives and offer more special and exclusive equipment. Company chief Oliver Blume (56) accepts a significant absorption of the operational margin, as the VW concert daughter surprisingly announced on Thursday evening.
According to the preliminary figures, the company was already under significant pressure last year. However, the management promised a stable dividend.
That im Dax Noted Porsche paper lost almost one percent on the trading platform Tradegate compared to the Xetra closing. Investors have hardly enjoyed the stock for some time. The record rally after the IPO in September 2022 lasted only a few months before the record high was reached at a good 120 euros in May 2023. After that it went downwards, currently the share certificate is only worth around half as much as in its best times and is a good quarter below the issue price of 82.50 euros.
JPMorgan analyst Jose Asumendi spoke in a first reaction of necessary changes. They are a positive step regarding the drive strategy and made it possible for the car manufacturer to return to growth in the next two years. He capped his expectations of the profit because of the upcoming financial burdens.
China business and new models load Porsche
According to preliminary calculations, the operational margin of Porsche – that is, the proportion that stays on the sales as an operational profit – was at the lower end of the targeted range of 14 to 15 percent last year. In 2023, Porsche had reached 18 percent. The weak cut in in China And the introduction of new models in most series of the car manufacturer.
This year, the margin is likely to slip to 10 to 12 percent due to the expensive program to strengthen short and medium-term earnings, but also due to the market-related sales expectations. Porsche actually has completely different ambitions: In the long term, Blume wants to earn more than 20 percent return on sales.
However, high investments are now necessary. Porsche wants to relax money for new models and for battery activities, the organization is also to be rebuilt. Specifically, the company was not in the message. Porsche also did not provide any information on possible effects on the employees.
In 2025, the management expects the measures to be charged with a burden on the financial loss in the automotive sector (Netto-Cashflow Automobile)-i.e. without financial services-of up to around 800 million euros. In 2024, the influx of funds was expected to be over 10 percent of sales and thus above the forecast bandwidth of 7 to 8.5 percent. In 2025, this range should then decrease to 7 to 9 percent.
Porsche 2025 sees sales at 39 to 40 billion euros. The Swabians had recently planned this magnitude for the past year. Porsche should also have ended up, because as it was said, the other most important performance indicators “did not show any significant deviations from the forecast bandwidths”.
Porsche board is to be rebuilt
At the weekend the car maker announced that CFO Lutz Meschke (58) and Sales Director Detlev von Platen (61) should clear their posts. The company did not give any reasons, but the weak performance of experts is the weak performance last year, especially in China. The Meschke, which is considered ambitious, is also said to have speculated on the post of Blume as Porsche boss if he was double role as a Porsche and Volkswagen-Group chief should give up. That was a thorn in the side of the owners’ families Porsche and Piëch.
Porsche and the Volkswagen Group are currently with major problems. Above all, the once so lucrative China business weakens. Premium and luxury cars are no longer going as well in the People’s Republic because the money is no longer so relaxed with wealthy Chinese in the real estate crisis. In the mass market segment, the Volkswagen brand recently lost its market leadership retained for decades because domestic electric car builders like Byd have flooded the market with cheap cars and have a price war. This is why VW must save at home, among other things, By 2030, the Wolfsburgers want to delete 35,000 jobs in Germany in the core brand
, but do without factory closures and operational terminations.
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. Volkswagen as a group even had to stop his profit forecast twice in 2024. A spokesman for the VW Group did not want to comment on the communication of Porsche on Thursday evening. Analysts recently expected that the situation in the group improved somewhat in the fourth quarter.
In any case, Porsche wants to keep the dividend for the past year. For 2023, the owners of the preferred share listed in the Dax received 2.31 euros.
Porsche SE announces higher depreciation
In addition to Volkswagen, the holding of the owner families, Porsche SE also holds a significant share in the sports car farmer Porsche AG. The Stuttgart Holding had already announced that because of the difficult situation, it would probably have to write off billions of book values due to the difficult situation in its investments. In the evening, the holding updated its information in view of the news of Porsche AG.
For participation in the Sportwagenbauer Porsche AG, it should now be a adjustment of 2.5 to 3.5 billion euros instead of only a maximum of 2 billion. For the Volkswagen shares, it is now to be expected that the value correction would rather amount to a value at the top of the bandwidth of 7 to 20 billion euros, it said. After all, the net debt of Porsche SE was probably 5.2 billion euros at the end of 2024 and thus in the intended area. Porsche AG plans to present the detailed annual report on the previous year on March 12th.