Volkswagen Group has seen earnings soar in 2011, taking the European car maker beyond last year's figures with a quarter still to run.
VW announced profits of €9bn ($12.4bn) for the first three quarters of 2011 against €7.1bn ($9.8bn) for the whole of 2010, helped by a 14% rise in vehicle deliveries and an improved global share of the automotive market.
VW Chairman Prof. Dr Martin Winterkorn Image: VW Group |
The company has delivered 6.2m vehicles so far this year, almost one million more than the same period last year, taking market share to 12.4% from 11.6%. Operating profits leapt 86% and this does not include a €1.9bn share of revenues from the company's Chinese joint ventures.
The positive news showed VW's ability to buck the economic trend, with continued growth across almost every region, particularly helped by the Skoda brand with unit sales up 20% across the model range.
Even the luxury end of the market proved lucrative for the company, with Audi's Q5 and Q7 models recording the brand's highest growth rates, while Bentley sales increased by more than 50%, dramatically slicing the super-luxury brand's operating loss from €145m last year to just €6m so far in 2011.
The company is expecting the upward trend to continue to the end of the year, with the VW Chairman, Prof. Dr Martin Winterkorn, forecasting revenue and profits to be "significantly higher than the previous year", with the continued economic tensions in the Eurozone being outweighed by developing markets in China, India and Latin America.