FRANKFURT: Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, said Wednesday its net profit skidded sharply lower in the first three months of the current year as a result of the “difficult market environment”.
VW said in a statement that its net profit slumped by 38.2 percent to 1.946 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in the period from January to March.
Operating profit fell by 26 percent to 2.344 billion euros on a 1.6-percent decline in revenues to 46.565 billion euros.
Customer deliveries, on the other hand, were up 4.8 percent at 2.314 million vehicles worldwide.
Looking ahead to the full year, VW said it expected to “outperform the market as a whole in a challenging environment and that deliveries to customers will increase year-on-year.”
However, the carmaker was “not completely immune to the intense competition and the impact this has on business,” it cautioned.
It said 2013 revenues were expected to “exceed the prior-year figure. Given the ongoing uncertainty in the economic environment, our goal for operating profit is to match the prior-year level in 2013.”
In 2012, VW booked net profit of 21.7 billion euros, operating profit of 11.51 billion euros on sales of 192.7 billion euros and customer deliveries of 9.276 million vehicles.
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