Volkswagen can as planned the minority shareholdersAudipush out and his daughter from the Stock exchange to take. The Munich Higher Regional Court granted the application to release the squeeze-out, said CFO Arno Antlitz (50) on Friday at a conference call on the quarterly figures. The transfer resolution passed by the general meeting at the end of July could thus be entered in the commercial register. “The lawsuits cannot hinder the progress of the process,” said Antlitz.
Volkswagen wants to sweeten the forced farewell for the small shareholders of the Ingolstadt-based upper class subsidiary with a cash compensation of 1,551.53 euros per Audi share. The Wolfsburg-based group already owns 99.64 percent of Audi. The remaining shares are mainly with speculators who have bet on a lucrative severance payment. According to Audi, two small shareholders originally sued the resolution of the general meeting.
Audi flashes like its parent company Volkswagen is somewhat more confident about the final months of the year. The company expects the positive trend in deliveries from the third quarter to continue. Sales director Hildegard Wortmann (54) said the order books were well filled. But Antlitz also emphasized: “Corona is not over, and the effects of the second wave can hardly be reliably estimated.”
Audi confirmed earlier statements on Friday that deliveries and sales for the year as a whole should be well below the values of the previous year. The operating result will therefore be considerably below the previous year, but will be clearly positive. For the inflow of funds (net cash flow) the group is now forecasting a value at the level of the previous year. A decline had previously been expected here.
Costs drop drastically – production should be stable thanks to the second corona wave
Audi did good business again in the third quarter. Sales and profit from July to September were above the values from the same period of the previous year, but this was also due to catch-up effects from the first half of the year and the sale of shares in the Here map service.
From July to September, profits of 1.1 billion euros and sales of 12.8 billion euros were well above the previous year’s period. In the current year, there is still a gap of a good 8 billion euros in sales and just under 1.7 billion euros in profit compared to the comparative figures from 2019.
In terms of business figures, Audi also benefits from savings. The fixed costs have been reduced by 11 percent, said Antlitz. The downsizing announced last year also contributes to this. At the end of the quarter, according to Audi, the workforce had already fallen to around 87,000 – the annual average for 2019 was just under 90,800. Most recently, on July 1, 1,300 employees took early retirement as part of the downsizing.
The CFO sees the company better prepared for a second wave: A lot has been done to make Audi safer and a lot has been learned on the subject of parts supply. He assumes that it will be possible to continue production even with a stronger second wave.