New Cayenne Should Help to Sustain Porsche's Profitability
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| Like what you see? Over 20,000 hot premium SUV prospects do. The Cayenne should enhance Porsche's 2003 profitability, helping the Stuttgart, Germany based company remain profitable. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press) |
On Monday, March 3rd, Porsche AG stated that due to the current crisis in Iraq destabilizing the world economy it couldn't rule out a slump in future vehicle sales. Still it remained optimistic it would meet its forecast of 65,000 vehicles sold in the 2002/2003 model year.
"The effects of a possible escalation of the Iraq conflict on the market are hard to judge," Porsche said in a statement. "For this reason negative effects on the business development and on the unit sales cannot be ruled out."
Porsche is fortunately in a strong position with January's preliminary figures showing a pretax profit up 19% to $CAD298 million/$US201 million in the six months of its fiscal year, with overall sales growing by 20% to $CAD3.4 billion/$US2.3 billion.
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| Porsche's Boxster, restyled for this year, is its most popular model. While more value priced than the venerable 911 the 2-seat roadster embodies the characteristics that Porschephiles hold dear. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press) |
Porsche also managed to remain one of the most profitable automakers, and that in what many consider a down market. Its second half of 2002 recorded earnings of E185 million ($CAD305 million/$US199 million) resulted in an 18% gain for the year.
The German brand should also be bullish regarding its first ever SUV, the Cayenne. It's managed to grab the attention of over 20,000 hot prospects - those who have expressed an interest to buy a sport utility vehicle and have especially shown interest in the Porsche brand - even before it was official introduced to U.S. customers at the Detroit auto show.