The French automaker Renault was in the black again in the first half of the year – after a long dry spell. As the company announced on Friday, the group’s net profit was 354 million euros. Sales rose by 26.8 percent to 23.4 billion euros.
In the same period of the previous year Renault had made a loss of 7.29 billion euros, in the full year 2020 one Record loss of 8 billion euros. Behind the 970 million euros profit in the first half of 2019, i.e. before Corona crisis, the result was left behind. In 2019 as a whole, the group posted a net result of only 19 million euros, compared to an increase of 3.5 billion euros in 2018.
The group sees the results as a result of its savings plan. The boss Luca de Meo (54), who has been in office since the middle of last year, relies less on quantity and instead wants to achieve a higher return. By 2025, 3 billion euros are to be saved. The group announced on Friday that it had already achieved savings of 1.8 billion from the target. In order to get out of the crisis, the group announced last year that it would cut 15,000 jobs. In addition, the company was able to take advantage of a government-guaranteed loan in the billions.
Because of the shortage of semiconductors, Renault expects that around 200,000 vehicles will not be able to be built this year. Despite the ongoing shortage of chips and rising raw material prices, Renault wants to be as profitable for the full year as in the first six months. Under the former VW manager de Meo, Renault is pushing under his Strategic Roadmap called “Renaulution” into electromobility and at the same time lower costs, among other things by concentrating on fewer but more profitable series.
The manufacturer has been in crisis for a long time. The economic consequences of the pandemic made matters worse. Also the deep red numbers for the Japanese partner Nissan, in which Renault has a 43.4 percent stake, pushed into the red in the same period of the previous year.