If you measure Volkswagen’s success by the goals of its chief financial officer, Arno Antlitz, which he recently set in SZ interview explained, then despite all the crises in the past year, things went quite well for the car manufacturer. “Are we able to achieve eight percent returns even in challenging times or not?” Antlitz had mentioned as a requirement – the preliminary figures published by VW on Tuesday say: Yes, Europe’s largest carmaker has achieved this goal with a return of 8.1 percent . Arithmetically, VW would keep 8.10 euros in the cash register for every 100 euros in revenue, without taking into account taxes, interest and other factors. The group has not yet mentioned the bottom line profit. It should be announced with the presentation of the full annual report on March 14th.
Group sales rose by around twelve percent to EUR 279 billion, while operating profit (EBIT) increased by 12.5 percent to EUR 22.5 billion. These numbers are within the ranges expected by analysts. Like other automakers, VW managed to increase sales and profits despite selling significantly fewer cars. In 2022, deliveries fell by seven percent compared to the previous year. The group sold 8.26 million vehicles, compared to around 8.88 million in the previous year. All in all, the only growth region was Asia-Pacific – if you exclude the most important market, China, where it fell by 3.6 percent, in particular due to Covid lockdowns.
The carmaker missed a financial target
However, the new board, which has been led by Oliver Blume since October, did not achieve all of the financial goals last year: the net inflow of free cash, the so-called cash flow, missed the mark targeted by management: after around 8.6 billion euros in 2021 After all, in 2022 only around five billion euros were booked there. The group actually wanted to at least reach the previous year’s level for this important key figure. The deviation is mainly due to the unstable supply situation and disruptions in the logistics chains, especially at the end of the year, explained VW.
The bottlenecks in semiconductors had caused a high stock of unfinished vehicles in the past year, which could only be delivered step by step. The funds tied up in working capital were therefore significantly higher than expected. In its current planning, however, the group assumes that this will reverse itself in the course of this year, as inventories decrease and production is running smoothly again. Overall, the group had around 43 billion euros in liquid funds in its core car business at the end of December. That was significantly more than the almost 26.7 billion euros a year ago. The plus consists almost exclusively of the proceeds from the Porsche IPO.