Porsche presented the numbers for the first half of their fiscal 2008/2009. There is bad news and there is pornographic news, says Automobilwoche [sub]. The bad news is that Porsche is not immune against carmageddon: Their unit sales dropped 27 percent to 34K slot cars. In Euros, their sales dropped 12.8 percent to €3B.
Now for the pornographic part. On sales of €3B, Porsche reports a pre-tax profit of—hold on to whatever you can hold on to—€7.34B. In the same period last year, it was only €1.66B. How did they pull this off? You guessed it: The hedge fund with a sheet metal bending subsidiary earned €6.84B at the stock exchange, wheeling and dealing with stocks and derivatives. Why were Euro sales much better than unit sales?
Boxster sales nearly evaporated in anticipation of the new generation. The venerable 911 still continued to sell briskly; a buyer strike amongst perturbed hedge fund managers be damned.
At least Porsche can continue with impunity to focus on its core competency: options trades. As reported by the FAZ, BAFIN, not quite the German equivalent of the SEC, announced that they closed the proceedings against Porsche. “We could not find evidence of stock manipulation,” said a BAFIN spokesperson today.
I would have guessed they were running illegal drugs…GM could learn from them in so many ways.
“We could not find evidence of stock manipulation”
Awesome…just awesome.
Thing is though; if the car sales don’t really matter except for being your pr-image for the outside world, why bother with the Panamera at this point, seems like an unnecessary risk.
I would have guessed they were running illegal drugs
Maybe that’s the reason why they bought Vee-dub, to have some extra sales volume to launder money more easily. Better be some profitable drug running though, otherwise it kind of misses the point.
Anyway, Porsche, huge profits, drugs, economic crisis, law suits…anybody else thinking about scarface/the 80s?
Awesome.
This seems vastly superior to being financial idiots and going down the toilet while crying for government bailouts. Plus it seems like they are beating the financial vultures at their own game.
Go Porsche! I say.
Drug money does not bring nearly as much dough as pushing money around. Otherwise Afghanistan and Mexico would be richer than the U.S….
If Porshe didn’t break the law, who cares how they made their profit? Companies are formed to generate income for their owners. Not provide jobs, donate to charity, etc. Although those things may help the bottom line.
Smart companies jumb on various opportunties to make money. Dumb companies will sell profitable businesses to finance their “core” business (i.e. see D3).
People were making fortunes shorting the markets.
Ummmm… WIN!!!11!!!
Live by the sword, die by the sword. These worms usually turn.
Now that VW belongs to Porsche and Porsche made a killing in the derivative market, does that mean the two will never receive government bailout money from now on?
John Horner :
March 31st, 2009 at 9:15 am
Live by the sword, die by the sword. These worms usually turn.
——————————————-
The company executives live by the sword; the tax payers die by the sword.
To be honest, I really don’t care for the pornographic. Whatever it takes to keep building those vehicles.
“We could not find evidence of stock manipulation” said a BAFIN speakstres today.
A more correct statement would have been, we could find no evidence of illegal stock manipulation. Just because Porsche is doing the screwing of the market place doesn’t make it any less of a screwing or any more honest.
It is hard to wrap your head around these figures for a company as small as Porsche. They just don’t produce that many vehicles compared to any volume company. But I guess this is where finance companies as an arm of auto companies stirs things up. I remember GMAC being GM’s saving grace for a while there.
“…they are beating the financial vultures at their own game.”
“We could not find evidence of stock manipulation”
Porsche is certainly up to something. Something that has to do with using Volkswagen somehow. These Germans play some serious hardball. They now have huge amounts of money. Will they waste it? What is their long term plan?
So Toyota has huge cash reserves. Porsche has a serious stock option money machine with Volkswagen. Ford is about to cash in as the premier domestic brand.
At this point, it’s all about survival. Porsche seems to understand that better than most.
I wonder if making obscene amounts of money in the market helps Porsche understand their core customer better.
Heads up display with Bloomberg crawl?
GM could learn from them in so many ways
De Lorean tried that, no?
Apparently Sargeant Schultz dropped some weight and is managing Porsche these days…
Porsche has been screwing with stocks in relation to the hedgies, but they did it in a completely legal manner (under German law) and there’s not much the hedgies can do about it.