2020 has been a difficult year for the automotive market, but the end of the tunnel could be close. This is demonstrated by the data released today by Audi, the Volkswagen Group automotive giant that closed the year with a operating profit equal to 2,6 billion, down by 43,5% compared to the 4,6 billion of 2019. The revenues, dropped by 10% to 50 billion euros, while the sales they recorded a fall of 8% to 1.693.000 million models sold (-15% for the total world market).
Il CFO of Audi, Arno Antlitz, explained that "the results were affected by the strong impact of the pandemic in the first half with a drop of 29% on an annual basis - he said - but the second semester recorded a strong increase with a year-on-year growth of 10%”.
Moving forward with the financials, the edge it was 5,1%, while for 2021 the company aims to bring it back up to between 7 and 9 percent and then rise to between 9 and 11 percent in 2022.
Contributing to the recovery recorded by the group in the second half was above all the chinese marketand which, explained the CFO, since April 2020 has returned to growth at a faster rate than in 2019 to end with record levels with sales up by 5,4% against a decline in the Chinese car market of 6,5%. "The recovery in Europe and the United States took place in the second half - he added - and we expect the momentum to continue in this start of 2021 even if strong elements of uncertainty remain linked to the pandemic and also to bottlenecks in the semiconductor market".
The financial result was also positively influenced by the sale of the company Audi Electronics Venture GmbH to Volkswagen AG for 589 million euros,
The Audi group intends to increase itsthe investments by 2025 to 35 billion euros by accelerating the transformation process to become a supplier of high-end connected and sustainable mobility. “Reducing CO2 emissions and protecting the planet are the most urgent tasks for our company in the long term – said the CFO – and we want to do our part. We will spend about 17 billion of our investment budget for 35 billion in future technologies and about 15 will be allocated to electric mobility and hybridization. This leaves us in a solid financial position for the challenges ahead."
Audi also provided the results of the subsidiaries Ducati and Lamborghini, both penalized by the closures of several weeks in the first months of 2020. The two companies recorded a sharp increase in requests in the second half, an increase that made it possible to contain the decline in sales, highlighted Audi. Speaking in numbers, in 2020 Lamborghini sold 7.430 models against 8.205 in 2019 while Ducati put 48.042 on the market, against 53.183 a year earlier.
"Despite the impact of the pandemic, our subsidiary Ducati sold over 48.000 models last year thanks to a strong recovery in demand in the summer months and it was the second best half-year ever for the group," said the chairman. of the Supervisory Board of the Audi Group, Markus Duesmann, during the annual press conference.
"The Ducati group - he added - is now in a more stable situation than it was a year ago". Thanks to the result recorded in the second half, Ducati managed to contain the drop in revenues on an annual basis below 10%.
Meanwhile in MY BAG the European auto sector continues to travel at full speed (+1,5% for theEurostoxx sector), with all the big names up sharply: BMW (+2,18%), Volkswagen (+3%), Daimler (+2,2%), Stellantis (+1,2%), Pirelli (+1,96 .1,7%), Renault (+XNUMX%).
