Porsche celebrates 2022 with record numbers and announces the future arrival of a new all-electric SUV, larger and more luxurious than the Cayenne and accelerates the electrification strategy of its models with the aim of selling more than 80% of them by 2030. drums.
Oliver Blume, CEO of Porsche (and of the Volkswagen group), presenting the 2022 accounts together with the head of finance and IT, Lutz Meschke, said that the Stuttgart-based house is planning to expand its product portfolio upwards with a fully-fledged SUV electric positioned above the Cayenne. This new vehicle concept is designed to offer strong performance and automated driving functions with the typical Porsche flyline, as well as a completely new in-vehicle experience.
“In this way we underline and strengthen our positioning in sports luxury. We are seeing profit growth in this segment, particularly in China and the United States,” Blume explained.
According to some advances collected by Automotive News, the new sports SUV, codenamed K1, will be built in Leipzig starting from the second half of the decade, and will have part of the technology seen on the Mission R concept presented in 2021 at the IAA auto show in Munich , with a high-performance battery and 920-volt electrical system designed to reduce charging times.
Blume also announced news on the transition to electric cars. The battery-powered zero-emission Macan is in the pipeline and will be available to customers in 2024, after software problems that slowed its release and prompted Porsche to create its own IT department which will be led by the Daimler’s former digital chief Sajjad Khan. The all-electric 718 is slated for mid-decade. And it will be followed by the fully electric Cayenne, which will thus enter its fourth generation and which, together with the new larger and more luxurious SUV, should allow Porsche to meet its goal of delivering more than 80% of its new vehicles as fully electric models. in 2030. Already this year, however, the third generation Cayenne will be released with strong updates and three new plug-in hybrid models with greater range.
In Chile where eFuels are born. The German challenge, Porsche license plate
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Porsche, moreover, has ambitious goals in terms of sustainability and is working to achieve a zero carbon emissions value chain for its vehicles in 2030. And at the same time it insists on eFuels, synthetic fuels, which the house of Stuttgart will produce in the Punta Arenas pilot plant in Chile with an investment of 75 million. In an online roundtable with European journalists following the accounts conference, Blume, on the German government’s stance in favor of synthetic fuels as a way to lower carbon emissions while saving the internal combustion engine after 2035, in fact, he explained that “there are no conflicts between the electrification process and the eFuels. The goal is the decarbonisation of the planet and eFuels are used to quickly reduce emissions from existing endothermic engines. Politics should support investments to make their prices more attractive. It’s worth it. I know of no other way to decarbonise combustion engine cars.”
In the meantime, the German company closed 2022, the year of the landing on the Stock Exchange, with record accounts, thanks above all to a careful price increase policy that compensated for the effects of the war in Ukraine, the pandemic and interruptions in the chain of global supply. Porsche reported a 2.6% increase in deliveries to 309,884 vehicles, but with a 13.6% increase in revenues to 37.6 billion euros (with growth mainly in the United States and China) and a jumped operating result by 27.4% to 6.8 billion euros. And the return on sales jumped to 18% from 16% a year earlier.
“In difficult conditions, we achieved by far the best result in Porsche history,” Blume commented. For 2023, Stuttgart aims for revenues between 40 and 42 billion euros, with an operating return on sales between 17 and 19%. But the board has launched the “Road to 20” program to increase returns to over 20% in the long term, an objective that will also be achieved thanks to new models in the pipeline and cost rationalization. For the CFO, Lutz Meschke, the success factors of Porsche are “better price positioning, the strong product mix, the increase in group sales, the effects of exchange rates and our high cost discipline”.
The dividend for 2022 will be 911 million euros (a figure perhaps not chosen by chance), with a premium of 5 million for preferred shares: a total of 916 million equal to 1 euro for ordinary shares and 1.1 for preferred shares.