Porsche sees a moderate dip in profits amid COVID-19 outbreak

As Porsche confronts the effects of the COVID-19 crisis in the first three months of 2020, the company's operating profit fell by 34% at $0.92 billion as compared to the previous year. Its return on sales stood at 9.5%, while deliveries were down by 5%.

The company handed over 53,125 vehicles to customers by the end of March. Since the beginning of the year, the workforce grew by one percent to 35,866 employees.

Lutz Meschke, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board at Porsche AG and Member of the Executive Board responsible for Finance and IT says, "At $9.2 billion, the company was even able to achieve a slight increase in sales revenues as compared to the previous year. This was due to a positive model mix, and the business units besides the car business also developed positively." As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, a drop in volume and costs related to continued high investments in electrification and digitalisation both worked against the positive developments. In addition to these costs was an increase in overheads from the introduction of new models - particularly the all-electric Taycan. Due to the crisis, these expenditures were not able to be offset by increased earnings in the first quarter.