ŠKODA AUTO delivered 360,600 vehicles worldwide in the first half of 2022 – 30% fewer than in the same period last year. The reasons for this include the war in Ukraine and the ongoing shortage of semiconductors. The operating profit of €676 million is 30.6% below the previous year, while the return on sales remains strong at 6.6% (previous year 9.6%). ŠKODA AUTO is continuing its NEXT LEVEL EFFICIENCY+ programme and still expects a robust return on sales for the year as a whole.

 

“Despite the many geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges, it’s clear that ŠKODA AUTO is crisis-proof. Our business is robust, demand for our models remains high and customers have stayed loyal to us in spite of the unavoidable waiting times. I thank them for this, and I’d also like to thank the entire team, who are demonstrating great resilience and flexibility in these times while doing everything they can to ensure our customers receive their new ŠKODA as quickly as possible. We expect the supply of semiconductors to further improve over the coming weeks and months. At the end of August, we’ll be presenting to the world our new brand identity that will reposition ŠKODA for the decade of transformation.”

ŠKODA AUTO CEO Klaus Zellmer

“The challenges we faced at the beginning of the year intensified in the second quarter. Nevertheless, ŠKODA is coping very well: Although significantly fewer vehicles were delivered to customers due to the supply bottlenecks, and prices for energy and raw materials have increased costs considerably, we were able to maintain the robust return on sales of 6.6%, in the second quarter. Through strong teamwork, we’ll continue to address the challenges, especially the global supply chain disruptions and the impact of war in Ukraine. We are therefore consistently pursuing our NEXT LEVEL EFFICIENCY+ cost and efficiency programme.”

ŠKODA AUTO Board Member for Finance and IT Christian Schenk

“We can look back on an extremely challenging first half of the year. In addition to the semiconductor shortage and coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine has had a particularly strong impact on us: In Russia, our second most important market, we suspended vehicle production at our Kaluga and Nizhny Novgorod plants until further notice and halted all exports to the country. In addition, a fire at one of our suppliers forced us to stop production of our best-selling OCTAVIA at certain points over the last few months. However, we have now resumed production at full capacity. We are also optimistic about the global demand for our vehicles, which remains high. We are working tirelessly to process the backlog of orders and shorten waiting times for our customers.”

ŠKODA AUTO Board Member for Sales and Marketing Martin Jahn

Article source: www.skoda-storyboard.com