The sports car maker tooPorschepays in the Corona crisis a strong profit and sees its long-term return targets moving far away. Porsche AG’s operating result fell by more than a quarter to a good EUR 1.2 billion in the first half of the year, as can be seen from the parent company’s Volkswagen annual report published on Thursday. With sales of around EUR 12.4 billion, the return is almost 10 percent. Porsche has actually set at least 15 percent as a benchmark – and adheres to it. For this, further measures to increase efficiency will be taken, CFO Lutz Meschke (54) announced.
In the first half of 2019, Porsche AG, which also includes financial services, had sales of EUR 13.4 billion and an operating profit of almost EUR 1.7 billion – a fine of EUR 500 million had already been deducted from the diesel affair. As the reason for the decline, the VW report now gives the combination of corona-reduced sales figures and further high costs, especially for digitization and electrification. Porsche delivered almost 117,000 vehicles worldwide in the first six months of 2020 – a decrease of twelve percent.
Porsche emphasized that the company did well compared to many other car manufacturers, thanks to a comprehensive program to lower the breakeven point and the successful launch of new products. CFO Meschke did not want to make a forecast for the year as a whole. “We are optimistic that we can partially compensate for the dents in March, April and May. Of course, this only applies if there are no further setbacks from the corona virus,” he said. “But we are doing everything we can to achieve a double-digit operating return on sales in 2020.”
Porsche’s lower profit and that Corona malaise of the parent company Volkswagen also have an impact on the dividends of the parent company Porsche SE. Only 2.21 euros are now to be distributed per preferred share, and around 2.20 euros for each common share, as the Stuttgarter Holding announced on Thursday. That would be 90 cents less than originally planned. The final decision will be made by the Annual General Meeting, which is now scheduled to take place online on October 2. VW had previously announced to refrain from actually planning to increase the dividendto save the cash register.
Porsche SE is the main owner of Volkswagen, its business essentially depends on the development of the Wolfsburg group. It is controlled by the Porsche and Piëch families, who hold all common shares. All other shareholders have no voting rights with their preferred shares, but receive a slightly higher dividend in return.