We don't know if Porsche is that damn shrewd, extremely lucky, or both, but the people running the sports car maker from Stuttgart sure seem to know what they're doing. During the first half of Porsche's fiscal year that ended on January 31st, the company's production numbers were down, sales declined, and yet profit skyrocketed from $222 million during the same period last year to $1.5 billion this year. Much of the windfall is attributed to Porsche's 27.3% ownership stake in Volkswagen, which in a year and a half has doubled VW stock while increasing Porsche's own worth by 50%. And the only reason sales numbers were down by 7% was the model changeover of the Cayenne SUV. 911 and Boxter saw gains of 15.7% and 19.6% in the half-year period.
Porsche is now confident it will beat its full-year 2006 profit of $2.76 billion this year, which would be a great year for a company 20 times its size.
[Source: Detroit Free Press]
