Ferrari and Bentley break records again
The car industry has been ravaged for the past 2.5 years by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, chip shortages and rising production costs: all factors that affect everyone. Or at least; you would think. However, the luxury brands generally manage to cope with the challenges quite well. Some even set new sales records. An overview.
We start with the most current figures: Bentley, Ferrari and Aston Martin are all using today to publish their results for Q3 2022. At both Bentley and Ferrari, they contain particularly good news. Both brands are busy with a record year, while both already set records in 2021. Bentley even made more than twice as much profit in the first nine months of this year than the brand did last year, in which it also sold a record number of cars.
This year, the sales numbers of Bentley are once again in the plus. The brand sold 14,659 cars last year, of which 10,934 in the first nine months. In January to September of this year, the brand has already sold 11,316. And then deliveries of the Bentayga EWB have yet to get underway. It currently accounts for 40 percent of Bentayga orders. The SUV itself in turn accounts for 41 percent of Bentley sales. The Continental for 32, the Flying Spur for the other 27. Especially in its home country, the brand is doing good business and is selling 25 percent more cars this year than last year.
With compatriot Aston Martin it all looks a lot less rosy. The brand is experiencing many problems due to the chip shortage. In addition, the British have not made a profit for a long time, but have been losing – in Q3 of this year even twice as much loss than in Q3 of last year. That knowledge caused the stock to fall in value by 12 percent today, the dark skies hanging over Aston Martin have not yet cleared up.
Ferrari takes the cake
At Ferrari it is very different. Its share price also fell slightly today, although for different reasons. The results are positive and Ferrari is also working on a record year, while 2021 was also a record year. A possible explanation for the softening of its stock market value is that the results are not as positive as some might have expected. According to an analyst quoted by the Reuters news agency, it would have been really surprising if Ferrari had not raised its expectations for 2022.
To paint a picture: Bentley scores a record this year with a profit margin of 23.1 percent. Never before in its 103 years of existence has the brand recorded such a high return. Ferrari meanwhile says coolly today that it expects a profit margin of 35 percent over the entire year. Previously they even hoped for more than 35 percent, but they don’t anymore – and the stock is dropping a bit. The reasons for the slightly lower profit than expected are the high development and production costs that the brand currently pays. The brand does not have to worry about the total profit, because the sales numbers do not lie. In the record year of 2021, the brand sold 8,206 cars in the first nine months. The same period this year was good for 9,894 copies: plus 21 percent (!).
Lamborghini also continues to die
Then the rest of the luxury brands. Porsche’s results were already in. The brand is doing great business, it’s not doing as well as Ferrari or Bentley, but it’s recording small pluses in sales and big pluses in profit. Lamborghini’s most recent results aren’t in yet, but the brand is booming and has been dealing with overflowing order books for a while. They were on track for a record midway through this year, and there’s no indication that that wouldn’t be the case after nine 2022 months. In addition, the brand recently presented the refreshed Urus S and its Performante version, which will most likely increase sales further.
Finally, we have McLaren and Rolls-Royce, the latter of which will be reporting its Q3 results tomorrow. For the brand with the Spirit of Ecstasy 2021 was in any case also a record year, and disappointing results are not necessarily in line with expectations. So we don’t expect anything crazy tomorrow.
Success has been less obvious at McLaren in recent years. The Artura, the brand’s first completely new modern model, has had a difficult start and was not quite finished when it was introduced. What that does to the numbers remains to be seen. McLaren will release its results later this month. In any case, the customers still know where to find the brand, because the order books are almost full. McLaren does have problems with the actual production of the cars: the total sales have already been adjusted downwards for this year because of the chip shortages. Nevertheless: in 2021 the brand turned a profit, where it recorded significant losses in 2020. After Q2 of this year, the brand was mostly positive, so we look forward to seeing the results at the end of the year. For that, it is hoped for McLaren that the Artura renditions are well and truly on steam.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl