D he is the new CEO of Volkswagen, Herbert Diess , has reaffirmed its goal of significantly increasing the profitability of the company. VW is preparing for the new era of the automotive industry with its strategy 2025, which was developed by former CEO Matthias Müller, he said on Thursday at the presentation of the balance sheet figures for the first quarter of 2018. “For this it is important to even better exploit the synergy potential in the group use as before. ”
The Supervisory Board of Volkswagen had surprisingly replaced Müller in the middle of April with Diess and wants the various Group brands in the future in the segments mass market VW , Skoda, Seat, Premium with Audi and luxury with Porsche and Bentley. This will be achieved with this step, that the group becomes agile and duplication of work is avoided. It is expected that this will make noticeable profit in just a few years.
“After the very successful first phase, it is important to continue this course powerful and focused – because the pace of change in our industry continues to increase,” said Diess. His goal was to make the Wolfsburg-based “in terms of earnings, innovation and sustainability to a leading company” of the auto industry. The quarterly results prove that VW is on the right track.
In the first three months of this year delivered Volkswagen nearly 2.7 million cars, 7.4 percent more than in the first quarter of 2017. Revenues increased by 3.6 percent to 58.2 billion euros. However, high costs for model start-ups and several special effects slowed the good start to the year. Thus, the operating result shrank by 3.6 percent to 4.2 billion euros – also because a new accounting reduced the balance sheet. Without this effect, the adjusted result was slightly above the previous year.
Outlook reaffirmed
Despite the dampening of earnings Diess reiterated the outlook for the current year. According to this, sales are expected to rise by up to five percent and the operating return to between 6.5 and 7.5 percent. In the first quarter, it was 7.2 percent, compared to 7.8 percent in the same period of the previous year. Analysts had criticized this in recent months as too ambitious.
The individual brands stood out again Skoda out. The Czech subsidiary increased its profit by 5.3 percent to 437 million euros. Seat even improved from low levels by 51 percent, to 85 million euros. In the core VW brand, which continues Diess in addition to his duties as CEO, the operating profit grew only slightly to 879 million euros. This was due to negative exchange rate effects and advance payments for new products, such as the implementation of VW’s ambitious electrical offensive.
The consequences of the exhaust gas scandal were barely noticeable in the quarterly figures. “Further substantial provisions in connection with the diesel issue did not materialize in the first quarter,” said the statement from Volkswagen. In addition, there was a significantly lower cash outflow because of the cost of the scandal.