Audi Group makes healthy profit despite semi-conductor crisis – forecast for 2021 adjusted

“As already announced in the first half-year, the shortage of semiconductors has affected us in the third quarter especially. We feel the consequences in our volume and financial figures. Thanks to active counter-measures and our strong operating performance we have significantly reduced the financial effects in the last nine months. Through great efforts and entrepreneurial flexibility, in the third quarter too we succeeded in demonstrating our strengths and securing our results. We therefore view the future with increased confidence,” says Jürgen Rittersberger, Audi Board Member for Finance and Legal Affairs.

From January to September the company made global deliveries to customers of 1,347,637 vehicles of the Audi brand (2020: 1,187,190). Thus, Audi performed better than in the first nine months of the previous year, with a solid increase of 13.5 percent. Whereas deliveries were at record levels in the first half-year, as expected the shortage of semi-conductors affected deliveries to customers in the third quarter. In that individual quarter, the number of deliveries fell by 23.8 percent compared with the same quarter of 2020, which was marked by a broad-based recovery. With a view to the last nine months, demand for Audi models developed positively in the leading markets: in Europe (+11.7 percent), in China (+9.9 percent) and in the USA (+31.2 percent), deliveries to customers were higher than in the previous, pandemic-affected year.

Significant growth in deliveries of all-electric Audi models justify the company’s clear move towards e-mobility: by the end of September, the Audi brand had supplied 52,774 all-electric vehicles to customers, and therefore achieved an increase of 51.4 percent compared to the same period in the previous year (2020: 34,850). As early as 2026, new models launched to the market by Audi will be all-electric exclusively. In 2033 production of the last models with internal combustion engines will cease.

Thanks to the positive trend of the first half, the revenue of the Audi Group from January to September, at €40,375 million (2020: 33,264 million), was higher than in the previous year. A strong price position and a high-value product mix further supported revenue. The SUV models especially, for example the Audi Q5 and the all-electric Audi e-tron, had a positive effect on revenue. In the third quarter, however, a fall in revenue of 13 percent reflected the challenges of semi-conductor supply. Revenues for the Lamborghini brand were considerably above the previous year’s level in the first three quarters at €1,399 million (2020: 1,182 million). For the Ducati brand, too, revenues were higher than in the previous year at €720 million (2020: 509 million).