A report released by
B&D Forecast revealed that Porsche made more money per car it sold than any other manufacturer. Not only that, it's reported profit of €21,799 per vehicle dwarfed that of second place BMW, which reportedly earns €2,475 per vehicle. When we first heard about this report, we thought something might not be right unless Porsche has been building its cars out of
Papier-mâché lately.
Basically, the study just took Porsche's pretax proft in the 2005/2006 fiscal year and divided it by the 96,794 vehicles it sold in 2005. Porsche is rightly arguing that the calculation is misleading because it doesn't take into account the company's one-off gains that year that had nothing to do with building and selling cars. Porsche's participation with VW during this time resulted in adding €203 million to the books and another €80.7 million came from the automaker's sale of CTS Fahrzeug-Dachsysteme. Neither source of extra income came from the result of selling cars, so they shouldn't be included in a profit-per-vehicle calculation.
Honestly, who ever believed that Porsche earns €21,799, more than USD$28,000, on every vehicle it sells? B&D Forecast should give the intern that wasn't sharp enough to catch this error a few good lashings.
Check out Porsche's official release on the matter after the jump.
[Source: Porsche,
just-auto.com]
PRESS RELEASE:
One-off and extraordinary effects result in distorted figure
Porsche refutes B&D Forecast profitability calculation
Stuttgart. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart, refutes the calculation of the B&D-Forecast forecast institute as unserious. In a study the institute asserts that with each of the 96,794 sports cars Porsche sold in the 2005/2006 financial year, Porsche earned an average of €21,799 Euros. The calculation is misleading because it does not take into account the extensive one-off and extraordinary effects which impacted the pre-tax result of the Porsche Group in the 2005/06 financial year and which have nothing to do with the original Porsche business.
Thus €203 million Euros of the pre-tax result comes from the participation in Volkswagen AG. This figure is largely purely an accounting one, which Porsche must include in its statement of earnings, even though not a single Euro flows to the sports car manufacturer. What is more, income from hedging transactions in connection with the VW participation resulted in a considerable three-figure amount in millions. This equally had just as little with the actual vehicle business. Furthermore, with the disposal of CTS Fahrzeug-Dachsysteme GmbH, the sports car manufacturer realized a book profit of €80.7 million Euros. This amount also cannot be allocated to the vehicle business.
From the Porsche perspective, it is thus not serious to include the above special effects in the calculation basis for profitability per vehicle.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Axel 3:48PM (1/25/2007)
So what!?! Pre-Tax profit of Porsche in that year was 2110 million Euros (2.11 billion, that 2.743 billion US$). Substract the 203 million euros from VW, the 80 million from CTS and you're at: 1827 million euros (US$ 2350 million).
Divide that by 100k cars (also that's too simplified, Porsche's doing services, etc.) then you're still at 18270 Euros per Vehicle (23750 US$ per car!)
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Js 3:45PM (1/25/2007)
Hmm...so then what is the profit per car ? Or is that left out because they would have been on 1st place anyway ?
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Tom 3:58PM (1/25/2007)
Don't forget licensing royalties for things like parts sales, model cars, apparel, etc. and various other forms of income. It's great when people talk and speculate like they know something but they really have no clue.
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olddavid 3:52PM (1/25/2007)
This merely underscores my personal belief that Porsche is the most over-priced and over-rated cars on the market. Having owned two (911SC and 911S) that drained my pockets while cementing my reputation in my family as "no brains- no headaches" shows how hard the Porsche jones is to kick. They need 12 step for the poor fools.
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Chunk 4:03PM (1/25/2007)
I don't think this is surprising at all. Do you realize how much Porsche nickel-and-dimes its customers? Look at the options on the Cayman S.
I really like their cars, but there's a reason why such a relatively small manufacturers does so well. The cars are overpriced, and consumers are willing to pay.
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fizzandpop 6:01PM (1/25/2007)
This profit per car game is awesome. Especially if you do it with Ford! And even more so if you do it with Ford's Q4 figures:
Q4 "Profit" ($5,800,000,000) divided by 625,000 cars and trucks=($9,280)
That's right, Ford were LOSING nearly TEN GRAND per car in the last quarter of 2006. Awesome!
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fizzandpop 6:01PM (1/25/2007)
And don't forget the racing division. That must make a chunk 'o change with all those factory race-prepped team cars they be sellin' to those millionaires. And Porshe credit, kerching, and sunglasses.
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drew 9:31PM (1/25/2007)
20k a car - OK... but how much are the cars selling for? 20k might seem like a fat profit, but when you're selling cars that are 100k+ then the picture changes a bit. profit margin... and not average profit per car is whats really important here and don't forget that they're income includes other income not directly related to their car business... like interest from investments, etc.
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