MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th May, 2023) German automaker Volkswagen registered a 31% drop in its first quarterly operating profit prompting it to seek to widen its footprint in China's electronic vehicle (EV) market, CNBC reported on Thursday.
In January-March of 2023, the car maker's operating profit fell by 31% to 5.7 billion Euros ($6.3 billion) from 8.3 billion euros ($9.1 billion) in the same period of 2022. However, the company noted a growth in its operation profits before valuation effects by 35%, as well as increase in sales revenue by 22% and in its stock price by 5.5%, which provides an optimistic forecast for 2023, CNBC reported citing Volkswagen CFO, Arno Antlitz.
"Based on that very solid first quarter and based on an order backlog of 1.8 million cars in Europe, we are quite confident that we will achieve all our financial targets for 2023," Antlitz was quoted by CNBC as saying.
Antlitz also noted a 14.5% slip in Volkswagen's car shipments to China as the company had to choose between the long-established combustion engine market and a recently formed in China battery electric vehicle (BEV) sphere, where Volkswagen has yet to settle.
"It's obvious we need to speed up, specially on the BEV side ... I'm confident that we will play a major role in China also in the future," Antlitz told CNBC.
Antlitz stated that Volkswagen's extended range of models and China-focused technology will help the company compete with Chinese biggest EV producer, BYD.
