Weekly column by Bernard Jullien Director of Gerpisa.
This week's publication of Volkswagen Group results attests to the solidity of Europe's leading group and translates the relatively good health of the global automobile sector along with the ability of a highly internationalised group to take advantage of this situation.
It also lends credence to the group’s strategy for 2018, by which time VW intends to produce more than 2 million vehicles, vs.7,278 in 2010. Lastly, it reinforces the sense that it is possible for a company to succeed in the automobile sector even if it maintains deep roots in high-wage countries.
A detailed examination of these results and of some of the analyses that followed calls for a number of remarks, however.
1) Europe remains relatively important for the VW group and it is interesting that out of revenues of €126 billion, Europe accounts for two-thirds of the total with the rest more or less evenly split between North America, South America and Asia-Pacific. Even if sales by Chinese partner firms are not consolidated in VW’s group turnover (which only show profits), this observation indicates that the solidity of its European positions remains one of the group’s key characteristics. lire la suite
