Volkswagen's 2021 financial report released: electric vehicle sales doubled, but not good news?

Recently, Volkswagen Group released its 2021 annual report. According to the data, the Volkswagen Group's revenue in 2021 increased by 12.3% year-on-year to 250.2 billion euros; operating profit increased by 99.2% year-on-year to 19.275 billion euros; operating profit margin increased from 4.3% in 2020 to 7.7%; pretax profit increased by 72.5% to 20.1 billion euros; and after-tax profit increased by 74.8% to 15.4 billion euros.

Affected by chip supply, Volkswagen Group's car sales in 2021 declined, with a total of 8.882 million vehicles delivered in the whole year, down 4.5% from 9.305 million units in 2020. Among them, among the nearly 9 million vehicles, 4.8969 million Volkswagen brand passenger cars and 359,500 commercial vehicles. It is worth mentioning that Volkswagen's global electric vehicle deliveries nearly doubled year-on-year to 453,000 units. This data is very good in isolation, but it is actually not a good news, and we will talk about it later.

By brand, Audi's total deliveries were 1.68 million units, almost the same as in 2020 but behind rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz; Skoda's global sales in 2021 fell by 12.6% to just 878,000 units; Seat's sales were 471,000 units, up from 427,000 units in the same period in 2020; Porsche set a new delivery record with sales of more than 300,000 units and a sales growth rate of 10.9%, ranking first among the core brands of the Volkswagen Group. Among them, the Macan is its best-selling product, with 88,000 units delivered worldwide.

On commercial vehicles, MANAG (MANN) and SCANIA (Scania) increased by 27.8% and 25.4% respectively from 2020; volkswagen supercar divisions, consisting of Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti, delivered a total of 23,000 vehicles, an increase of 23.6% over last year.

In terms of sales area, Volkswagen delivered a total of 3.519 million new vehicles in Europe, down 2.7% year-on-year. Total sales in Western Europe were 2.86 million units. New energy vehicles are very popular in Europe, especially in Western Europe, accounting for 10.5% of the Group's deliveries in Western Europe, compared with only 6.2% in 2020. Volkswagen is firmly positioned as the leader of the European pure electricity market.

In the Americas, Volkswagen Group's Sales in North America totaled 908,000 units, up 15.6% y/y. North American deliveries increased 16.9 percent to 672,000 units, while Volkswagen's sales in South America increased 514,600 units, up 5.1 percent. Brazil, the region's largest market, delivered essentially the same as 377,000 units in the same period last year.

Shipments in the Asia-Pacific region decreased 12.4% y/y to 3.611 million units, while deliveries in the Chinese market decreased by 14.1% to a total of 3.305 million units, remaining the Largest single market in the world for the Volkswagen Group.

In the electric vehicle segment, Volkswagen accounts for 25% of the pure electric vehicle market share in Europe; ranks second in the United States with a share of 7.5% and in China, delivering 93,000 electric vehicles is more than four times that of 2020.

According to the financial report data, the Volkswagen Group invested 1.56 billion euros in vehicle research and development costs in 2021, an increase of 12.2% year-on-year, and the proportion of research and development was 7.6%. Over the past year, Volkswagen has continued to expand its investment in software development and autonomous driving research and development to expand its product matrix and market competitiveness for electric vehicles. Volkswagen Group said at the financial report press conference that the automotive industry is experiencing a deep-seated change, electrification, intelligence has become the trend of the times, in the face of the great waves of the times, only by constantly refreshing the technical bottleneck can stand at the head of the tide, Volkswagen will continue to increase investment.

In December, the Volkswagen Group announced plans to invest a total of 159 billion euros over the next five years, of which 89 billion euros will be spent on technologies such as software and electric vehicles, accounting for 56% of the total investment. Among them, 52 billion euros will be used for electric transportation, 8 billion euros will be used for hybrid technology capital investment, and another 30 billion euros will be used for the development trend of intelligent and unmanned driving.

In order to achieve this investment goal, Volkswagen has drawn up plans to list Porsche independently. It is understood that the public may evenly distribute the share capital into preferred shares and common stock, and up to 25% of the preferred shares will be put into the capital market, which may bring tens of billions of dollars.

At the same time, Volkswagen once again reiterated that it will introduce the SEAT brand to China through a joint venture with Jiangqi Group. Whether this move will save volkswagen's only loss-making brand is unknown. One thing is certain, however, that the Volkswagen Group wants to strengthen its share of the world's largest single market through a multi-brand strategy and ensure that its performance in China can remain stable.

The editor said: Although the Volkswagen Group has lost 2.4 million vehicles in annual sales worldwide in the two years since the epidemic, Volkswagen has maintained growth in terms of profitability, which gives Volkswagen the confidence to continue to promote the electrification transformation. Speaking of electrification transformation, Volkswagen seems to be making a bold move in full force, and has achieved certain results, but it is not a bright prospect, the challenge in front of it is that young people now like electric vehicles with a sense of technology, Andrwav is not good at doing this, so even if it is already catching up, Volkswagen's electric vehicle deliveries last year are still less than half of Tesla's. Perhaps, Volkswagen also needs to change more thoroughly, rather than pursuing the Golf and T1 in the electric age.