Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles has increased its profits in the first half of 2022, seeing them more than double to €187m, despite vehicle deliveries dropping by more than 25%.
The increase in operating profit of more than €100m can be put down to a huge boost in the used vehicles and aftersales business, with both making a significant contribution to the company's profits.
The continuing supply issues with new vehicles also meant that discounts are hard to come by, increasing the average price of a new vehicle and, with that, the margin made on each van.
The challenges facing production continue, due to the well-known semi-conductor shortage and the impact of the war in Ukraine, leading to supply chain disruption that’s extending manufacturing and delivery times. That pushed total deliveries to customers down to 153,600 vehicles in the first half of the year, a drop from 205,000 in the first half of last year. Some 112,200 of those deliveries were into Western Europe, which accounts for 73% of Volkswagen’s LCV sales.
Despite the increase in profits, sales revenue fell by €252m to €5.046b.
Volkswagen’s short-term future looks more profitable, with the launch of the electric ID.Buzz Cargo van and Amarok pickup truck, both arriving in the UK within the next 12 months.
Lars Krause, Member of the Board of Management for Sales and Marketing, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles:
“It’s clear that deliveries to customers are falling short of our targets. Despite the drop, however, we even succeeded in increasing our total market share slightly to 13.6% in the European Economic Area by the end of May. This is a clear sign of our brand’s strong sales performance.
We’ve embarked on a comprehensive programme of measures for the second half of the year in order to ramp up our production output and thus our deliveries to our customers in particular.
With the ID. Buzz and the new Amarok, we’ve introduced two very important vehicles for our brand. The ID. Buzz is the all-electric, digital interpretation of our iconic ‘Bulli’. It’s paving the way to sustainable mobility and will also underpin our development activities in the field of autonomous mobility services.”
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