The car rental company Sixt wants to further reduce its inventory of electric vehicles. The company cites two reasons: Firstly, customers have shown greater interest in vehicles with conventional drive systems. On the other hand, used car prices for electric cars have fallen by more than 20 percent over the past year. This has a negative impact on Sixt’s business figures. Because the declining revenue for the early sale of electric vehicles with residual value risk leads to increased depreciation. This impacted the 2023 result by around 40 million euros.
The Pullach-based company says it would like to continue offering electric vehicles, but this depends on demand. “According to Sixt’s assessment, the lower demand compared to combustion engines resulted in a substantial amount of lost sales.” Sixt previously had the goal of achieving an electric share of 70 to 80 percent in its fleet across Europe by 2030. The company has not yet commented on whether this target will be met. Sixt only announced on Tuesday that it would offer access to hundreds of thousands of charging points across Europe in its app. In November it became known that Sixt wanted to reduce the number of its Tesla vehicles due to high repair costs and low resale values. Rival Hertz announced in January that it would sell 20,000 electric cars due to high costs.
Despite record sales, Sixt recorded a decline in profits last year due to the falling residual values of electric cars. The company announced that pre-tax profit shrank by 15.6 percent to 464.3 million euros in 2023 based on preliminary figures. Group sales climbed by 18 percent to a record level of 3.62 billion euros. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) also reached a record level of 1.33 (2022: 1.14) billion euros. The shareholders have to be content with a reduced dividend: they should receive 3.90 euros per ordinary share and 3.92 euros per preferred share. In the previous year the dividend was 4.11 euros per ordinary share.
Sixt expects a loss at the start of the year, and profit before taxes (EBT) in the first quarter will be between minus 15 and minus 28 million euros. Last year there was a profit of 33.3 million euros in the books. For the 2024 financial year, the board expects a pre-tax profit of between 400 and 520 million euros, which is on average around the previous year’s level of 464 million euros. In view of the high expected demand and the continued international expansion, Sixt is expecting significant sales growth.