Aston Martin lost £1m a week despite rising sales
Aston Martin Lagonda has stressed the seasonality of its performance after it revealed it lost more than £1m a week in the first quarter of the year.
The luxury car manufacturer has endured a difficult first year as a public company, with its share price dropping 55% and wiping nearly £2.5bn off the company’s value since its float last October.
The latest financial figures, for the three months to March 31, will do little to calm investors’ nerves. The company recorded pre-tax losses of £17.3m – a £20m reversal on a year earlier.
Revenues were up 6% to £196m in a “seasonally small quarter”. It only sells around 15% of its annual total of vehicles in the January-March period.
Dr Andy Palmer, chief executive of Aston Martin
“We expect our normal H2 seasonality to be amplified by Specials which are heavily weighted to Q4 this year,” he said.
“We are putting all the right building blocks in place as we look towards 2020 with the first sales of the DBX, investing in a disciplined manner, and controlling costs, to ensure the continuing, successful execution of the Second Century Plan.”
Gaydon-based Aston Martin is expecting an increase of at least 10% in the number of cars sold in 2019, which it achieved in the first quarter.
For the whole of 2019, it has previously guided an adjusted EBITDA margin of 24%. The first quarter achieved 14%.
But Dr Palmer believes the increase in sales volumes shows the luxury brand “offers some resilience” to the industry trend of declining sales.
He added: “Our Q1 results, yielding a 12% increase in core car wholesales and a 39% increase in global retail sales, demonstrates both this resilience and the demand-led approach of our business model.
“Moreover, the retail growth in the Americas, which almost doubled is encouraging as it vindicates our focus on and effort in this important region.”
